


Perihelion

by VioletVerita



Category: Joker (2019), Taxi Driver (1976)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Eventual Smut, Friendship/Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Obsession, Power Dynamics, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletVerita/pseuds/VioletVerita
Summary: Lonely in Gotham after the events of NY, Travis latches onto Joker’s broken and alluring persona with an eerie intensity. With his obsession mounting, Travis pays Arthur a visit in Arkham.
Relationships: Travis Bickle/Arthur Fleck
Comments: 37
Kudos: 46





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone. This is my first fiction piece in a really long time, but I had this story ruminating in my head for a while now, so I was eventually compelled to write it. Please leave me feedback and comments; they'll definitely keep me motivated to write more. Rating likely to increase.
> 
> This story is loosely based off of a similar prompt that I'd written. I'd also like to thank RovingOtter for being my first set of eyes on this!

**Chapter 1**

Travis stares out at Arkham Asylum from behind the rainswept windshield of his taxi, sipping a black coffee and wearing dark shades that obscure his face. The grey behemoth of a building looms over Gotham like a watchful, all-seeing parent, a chastising reminder of what happens when you break the social contract.

_Better not be bad kiddos_ , _or else you’ll spend the rest of your days screaming in a white room_.

It seems like Gotham’s own personal hell, the physical embodiment of the city’s moral decay seeping into its bones.

Travis almost talks himself into driving off and going back home to sleep instead. In past moments of insecurity, sleep deprivation has taken over and he’s done exactly that. But somehow, he always ends up back here, feeling more desperate than the last time, his thoughts a disorganized blur of images and fantasies that he won’t allow himself to believe in too much out of fear of what it all means.

It’s 7 A.M and he hasn’t been to sleep in 22 hours, his nights spent riding around in his cab, picking up fares in order to feel human. He takes another sip of coffee and tries to stave off the oncoming headache, pressing the meat of his palms hard into both eyes until stars burst behind his lids.

How many times has Travis circled this cryptic old building in his cab on mornings like this one, thoughts racing uncontrollably, hoping somehow to get a glimpse of Arthur Fleck in the flesh? As if the sight of him might fix that small dying thing that’s been broken in Travis since he was a boy?

And it’s not like Travis doesn’t get the absurdity of it all. Realistically, he knows that he won’t ever get to see Arthur from out _here_ , that wherever they’re keeping Joker is far away from the outside world. _And other people_.

Yet still, his eyes linger on the tiny barred windows on the highest floors, and he can’t help but wonder: _Is Arthur in one of those cells? Lying on his mattress maybe and staring at the ceiling, wishing he could look outside, breathe some fresh air?_

It’s thoughts like this that keep Travis coming back here, watching the asylum as if silently willing the building to deposit Arthur Fleck right in front of him.

He’s distantly aware that his behavior is what his counselors from ‘Nam would call “erratic” and that the obsessive way that he’s followed Arthur’s case over the past few months can’t be considered healthy, but it’s the only thing that’s kept him invested in this city after all this time— the only thing that brings him an inch of peace. _And sanity._

Because on the nights when he awakes screaming and clawing at his own skin, it’s the sound of Arthur’s pre-recorded voice that quietens the minefield of his brain.

It makes him feel crazy sometimes.

But doesn’t quite know how to stop.

So he doesn’t.

***********************************

When Travis takes the elevator to the patient intake floor, he’s greeted by a heavyset black man stationed at a run-down-looking front desk, mountains of peeling file boxes stacked behind him. 

“Hey, I called earlier. I’m Travis Bickle. I’m here to see Arthur Fleck.”

At the mention of Arthur’s name, the man gives Travis a long, wayward look through the protective grate between them.

“Uh… Fleck, Arthur Fleck?”

“Yeah.”

He lets out a little disbelieving breath, turns to open a file cabinet, and then pulls out a xeroxed piece of paper and a pen, which he slides to Travis along the little opening at the bottom of the gate.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a consent form and a waiver.”

“A waiver?”

“Yeah, it means that you acknowledge that you’re putting yourself at risk, so that if some shit goes down, Arkham can’t be too liable.”

_An institution that ducks responsibility— Sounds like a great place to be put away_.

Still, he takes the faded page and starts scribbling his name.

Travis can feel the man watching him as he fills out the form.

When Travis slides it back to him—James, the clerk’s name tag reads—leans into the gate, holding Travis’ eye with a worried expression.

Conspiratorially, he whispers, “Between you and me, man, why do you want to see… _him_? I mean, everybody here is fucked up in their own way, but Fleck doesn’t get visitors for a reason, you know?”

Travis flushes slightly, shrugs his shoulders. Despite himself, he asks, “I mean, he can’t be that bad, right? Compared to the other headcases in here.”

He tries to give the clerk what he thinks is an amicable smile, but on Travis’ face it must not have its intended effect because the man just stares at him nervously.

Then the clerk looks briefly over his shoulder, into the dimly-lit depths of the file room, as if making sure that no one else overhears him, and says, “I’m really not supposed to tell you this, but there was an incident last month with one of the psychiatrists.”

Travis shuffles closer, ears perked up. “What’d’ya mean?”

James hesitates, then says, “She was hired by the city to talk to Fleck; get to know him. Help him, you know?”

Travis nods once, brows furrowed.

“Well, when they found her, her head was cracked open like a melon.” His face goes vaguely sour. “There was blood everywhere, man. And Fleck was dancing in it when they caught him. Took two guys to chase him down and sedate him. And even more people to clean up the bloody fucking footprints he’d trailed all over the hallway. That room smelled horrible for weeks.”

Travis takes this all in with a quiet, barely-concealed fascination. But it wouldn’t do him good to spook the guy at the desk by seeming too interested, so Travis forces himself to say, “That sounds pretty bad. She ok?”

He grimaces, face distant. “She’s alive. But barely. I think she quit practicing.”

After that, the silence tells them both that the conversation is over.

“Anyway,” the clerk says. “You seem like a good dude. Young too. Not sure why you want to waste a perfectly good Saturday morning talking to this guy. He’s not right.”

Travis doesn’t bother correcting him that he isn’t a “good” man either, that he’s not all that “right” himself. That he’s felt empty and restless and angry for as long as he remembers.

But that conversation might get Travis locked up in here too, so he just nods noncommittally and says, “Guess I got nothing else to do.”

The clerk gives Travis a pitiful look and shrugs. Starts processing the paperwork.

Travis taps his foot on the linoleum to pass time, shoving his hands into the pockets of his brown military jacket as he stares down the long line of Arkham’s yellowing, tiled hallway. A man in a wheelchair sits idly picking at the skin of his arm and muttering nonsense to himself.

A thought comes to Travis, unbidden—that Joker doesn’t belong here, trapped in a cage with people who are barely lucid, pumped full of meds and whatever else.

No, he doesn’t belong here at all.

***********************************

The visiting room appears sterile in the way that only old hospital rooms can: all white, painted-over concrete and rusty metal pipes. There’s an old fashioned black clock high on the wall behind Travis’ head, ticking so loudly that it’s hard for him to think. So he tries to focus on the deep scratches gouged into the worn table before him instead, the chipped paint on the room’s single white door.

Travis is sitting stock-still when two orderlies enter the visiting room with a tired-looking Arthur Fleck in tow. Each man has him secured by the crook of his elbows, their grips ironclad, as though they’re afraid he’ll wriggle free the moment they stop squeezing the lean muscles of his forearms.

In person, Arthur Fleck is pale, thin, and waifish. Even in the scattered light of the room, Travis can see the bones of his shoulders protruding at seemingly unnatural angles under his white hospital shirt. 

And yet despite this, the two men look visibly nervous as they lead him over to the metal chair facing Travis and start threading a longish chain from the cuffs around his wrists through the gaps in the seat. Arthur watches all of this happen with a detached sort of amusement—a small quirk of his lips—which should alarm Travis, but excites him instead.

Then Arthur’s eyes move to Travis, as if just realizing that he’s been sitting there the entire time. Travis tries his best not to fidget under his scrutiny.

Quietly, still maintaining eye contact with Travis, Arthur tilts his head to one side and says, “Jeffie, would you be a doll and hand me a cigarette?”

His voice is so soft and clear this close up— _musical almost_ —and one of the orderlies, who Travis guesses must be Jeff—a big balding white guy built like a drill sergeant, the type of gung-ho moron to probably have enlisted voluntarily—visibly startles at the sound.

From his perch behind Arthur’s back, Jeff glances at Travis for some reason, as if looking for support, then he says gruffly, “You know you’re not allowed to smoke in here Fleck.”

Turning his head to face Jeff now instead of Travis, Arthur says “Oh, I know... but what’s the harm? I’m all tied up.” He holds his wrists out in front of himself placatingly, as if to make his point. He blinks once, eyes gleaming, and grins sweetly, “It can be our little secret.”

Jeff immediately swallows and gets flustered, his throat working, just as the other orderly (a youngish black man who looks as tired as Travis feels these days) says, “Nah, don’t listen to him, man. The last thing we need is for this freak to fucking burn _him_ with it or some shit.” He jerks his thumb over to Travis and frowns. “After Dr. Harris, we don’t need another lawsuit.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not gonna sue you,” Travis says to no one in particular.

The second orderly glances at him and then continues speaking as if Travis isn’t there. “Just leave it be,” he instructs Jeff, his tone pinched.

Jeff is still standing there like a deer in headlights, visibly shaken from having been singled out by name. Arthur is still staring at him expectantly, head tipped back in a mock-version of a ballroom dip.

“Come onnn,” he drawls. “I’m feeling kind of antsy, Jeffie. You know that they always manage to calm me down.”

Travis can’t see Arthur’s eyes, but he imagines the look he’s giving Jeff is effective, because the bigger man visibly deflates, grumbles for a bit, then rummages in his pocket and produces a crumpled cigarette box.

“Are you fucking serious?” the second orderly splutters, hands askew.

Jeff ignores him and takes out a cigarette. “You got a lighter?”

“Yeah, but—“

“Give it to me.”

“Fuck that. I’m not letting you light his fucking—“

“Give me the goddamn lighter, Sean. The quicker we do this, the quicker we can get the fuck out of here.”

“But—“

“Just do it.”

Sean’s expression is livid as he throws the lighter into Jeff’s palm.

When Jeff turns his attention back to him, Arthur is grinning like the cat that got the cream, his fingers tapping little happy rhythms onto the tabletop.

Jeff’s fingers start shaking as he places the cigarette in Arthur’s hand.

Arthur puts it between his lips, looking for all the world like he’s getting ready for his Broadway debut. He glances to his right at Jeff and says, stick hanging from his mouth, “Aren’t you going to be a dear and light it for me?”

Travis watches as Jeff blows out a long, annoyed breath and steps closer into Arthur’s space, bending slightly at the hip to reach. As soon as the flame hits the cherry of the cigarette, he’s stepping back so fast that Travis would’ve thought he got burned in the process.

Arthur just chuckles, a deep throaty sound, just as Sean and Jeff take three steps toward the door. For a moment there’s just the sound of Arthur’s inhales, the gentle wafting of smoke, and then Sean is giving Travis a pointed look.

“Alright. You. Ground rules: Don’t touch him, don’t give him anything. There's a camera right there”, he points to the decrepit-looking hunk of metal in the far right corner of the ceiling. “It’s for your own protection. You have 15 minutes...”

Travis nods along, vaguely listening. His attention is now on Arthur, who throughout Sean’s little speech has begun studying him with a curious expression.

Now that he has his attention, Travis decides to study him back.

Even without his paint, there’s something about Arthur that’s striking. His doe-like green eyes should look out of place in his gaunt, angular face, but they don’t. Somehow it works and Travis can’t help but notice how soft his dark brown hair looks pulled back in loose waves out of his face, the lingering strands tucked behind his ear. Distantly, he wonders how he got it to be so green on the show.

_The photos don’t capture this_ , he thinks, taking in Arthur’s thick brows and—

“Hello??” Sean is saying, snapping his fingers to get Travis’ attention. “Did you get all of that?”

“Yeah,” Travis says roughly, willing them to both leave so that he can finally talk to Arthur alone. He tries a smile that’s meant to be reassuring, but it ends up looking like bared teeth.

Sean eyes him uncertainly for a moment longer, then—finally satisfied by whatever he sees in Travis’ face—says slowly, “Alright then. We’ll be outside.” He nods to Jeff, who lumbers toward the exit, and they both leave, the old metal door shutting behind them with a creak and a bang.

And then they’re finally alone.

Arthur is still smoking his cigarette, watching him with an unreadable expression.

Travis clears his throat and says, “They, uh, they seem nice.”

His words have their intended effect, and Arthur snorts, takes a pull from his cigarette. “Everyone’s nice here”, he says. “Didn’t you know…?”

“Travis.”

“Travis.”

Then there’s silence and they’re watching each other again.

Arthur takes another pull into his lungs, exhales, and says, “So… _Travis_ , how can I help you?”

Alright, well here it is. _Don’t fumble now._

“I’ve been reading about you for a while now,” he starts. “Ever since I saw you on TV that night.”

At that, Arthur inclines his head slightly, and Travis continues.

“And uh, you seem like you could use a friend. No offense,” he adds for good measure. “Especially in here. I could be that for you. I _want_ to be that for you.” 

Arthur’s eyes are opaque and unyielding sea glass as they map across his face. His pale, cuffed hand taps ash onto the worn formica table between them. Travis notices thin scars on his wrists.

“Is that so?” he drawls, eying Travis skeptically, a quick flutter of dark lashes on his cheeks.

“Yes.”

“And why would I want to be your friend, Travis?” He blows out a puff of smoke, his brow arched.

Travis swallows once, steeling himself against the intensity of Arthur’s questioning gaze.

When his voice finally emerges, as strong as he can make it, he says, “Because ever since that night, all I could think about was seeing you, meeting you. Getting to know you. I have a feeling that we’re alike. You and me. That we’d understand each other.”

The words that leave his mouth next sound ridiculous, even to his own ears, but he feels them with everything in his body.

“Us meeting right here, right now feels like fate. Like I was supposed to know you. Like we’re made of the same things.”

If Arthur is taken aback by his barely-coherent confession, Travis can’t tell. His pale, gaunt face is expressionless, emerald eyes steady as a loaded pistol.

Travis swallows once, twice, unable to ignore the way his heart is trying to pry its way out of his chest. A moment stretches, and just when Travis finds the silence to be too uncomfortable, Arthur’s lips quirk slightly.

And he laughs.

The sound is so jarring that Travis startles in his seat, barely able to focus. He knows about the laughing condition, has read enough Gotham Gazette stories covering Arthur’s trial and rewatched the infamous Murray Tape more times than he can count, and still, none of that prepares him for the bone-chilling cackle of Arthur’s voice echoing in the small white concrete room.

_“HAHAHAAHHAHAHHAH!”_

Travis struggles to keep his cool in the face of the outburst, his fingers itchy and damp as he stares at the long line of Arthur’s throat, the thrown-back angle of his sharp nose and his dark hair as he laughs. 

When the laughter finally stops, tapering off into a breathy chuckle, Arthur’s cheeks are flushed pink and he’s smiling in earnest now, a grin that stretches unnaturally on his wide mouth, pulling the slight groove on his lip at a cruel angle.

Then, half convinced that he’s hallucinating now, Travis watches numbly as Arthur leans back into the metal hospital chair with a distinctly feline ease that reminds him of showgirls and red lights despite the harsh fluorescents of the visiting room— legs crossed at the thigh, eying Travis with an unreadable expression that could be either amusement or contempt.

He takes a leisurely puff from his cigarette, releasing a plume of smoke that momentarily obscures his grinning face.

“Well”, he breathes, voice taking on a gentler tenor that sounds distinctly coy. “Isn’t that just... adorable?”

At the sudden flash of heat in Travis’ eyes, Arthur's smile grows impossibly wider, as if in challenge. If only to assuage his own humiliation, Travis wants to reach across the table and knock it off of his fucking face.

Travis wonders if it would even hurt him—the violence—and gets the feeling that Arthur would just laugh some more to hide that there’s something broken in him. Travis ought to know; he’s God’s broken man. 

But Travis doesn’t do it. Can’t.

Not when he remembers why he’s here, why he wanted so _badly_ to be seen—by Joker.

And it doesn’t take Travis long at all to remember how he felt that first night, watching Gotham finally go to shit the way all crooked shitholes are destined to, and the sound of police sirens battling teeming masses of bodies with clowns for faces, their errant cries restless and terrifying. And at the center of it all, Joker, a blood-splattered specter in red, his ghastly white face luminous under the heat of Murray’s studio lights—a fallen angel from space.

Travis remembers Joker’s clear televised message, a sacred call to action for all of the nobodies in the world, the downtrodden—as blissful to Travis’ ears as a salve on boiling skin. 

He remembers the way Arthur’s thin fingers twitched before they squeezed the trigger, before all hell broke loose.

Travis dreamt of touching his hand.

When Travis emerges from his reverie, Arthur is still watching him like he’s a puppy that he hasn’t decided he wants to keep yet.

Travis forces himself to press on despite that cold look, his frenzied daydreams giving him a renewed sense of purpose.

“Seein’ what you did out there, who you _became_ — it changed my life. You finally did something to stand up to all the filth and garbage in these streets.” His voice lowers, “You made a difference when nobody else would. And they locked you up for it like fucking cowards.”

The expression in Arthur’s eyes turns calculated now, all of his previous mirth gone. His cigarette hangs loosely from his hand as he uncrosses his legs, leans forward as far as the chains anchoring him to the seat will allow. The words that come next are quiet, but ominous.

“They _‘locked me up’_ because they finally understand what I’m capable of. Clearly you don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

Travis glances away, tries to focus on the recently repainted plaster of the white concrete, the smell of cigarette smoke and the annoying ticking of the room clock behind him. Anything but Arthur’s unreadable, vacant expression.

Travis suddenly wishes that he were better with words. He has so much that he wants to tell Arthur, so many things that he can’t quite bend into the shape of poetry or sense or sanity. Nothing that can make Arthur grasp the magnitude of Joker’s becoming.

“I’m here because I just thought that... maybe—” The words leave Travis in a rasp just in time for Arthur’s expression to shift to something dangerous.

“You thought that _what_ ?” Arthur challenges, his lips a cruel carnival grimace that would be comical if not for the words that follow. “That I’d be _happy_ to see you? Just because you were naive enough to come here?”

Travis can barely breathe, his throat paper. He suddenly feels stupid, like a dumb kid who keeps dirty magazines under his bed and expects the girl in his fantasies to actually want to fuck him, to actually want to _know_ him. Then Travis cringes at the analogy, hates how pathetic it makes him sound.

Because it’s not like Arthur’s some girl; even with his bird-thin body and large eyes, Travis would be a fool to think so. And yet, the thoughts come to him anyway, of Arthur as an ancient night creature purring in the darkness, a raven-winged archangel with emeralds for eyes and scarlet lips—surrounded by a halo of flame.

_What the fuck am I even thinking right now?_

Travis’ mind is spiraling.

This is starting to feel just like Betsy all over again, like Iris—and an eerie déjà vu settles over him, so unnerving that he can barely contain the mounting anger and fear threatening to make him upheave the black coffee he had before coming here.

“No”, Travis croaks. “No I didn’t expect that, I just wanted to see you. To see that you were real. Flesh and bone and air and…” _Power_ , he doesn’t say. “But most of all, I wanted you to see me too.”

From the haughty expression in Arthur’s green eyes, Travis fears that he’s given too much of himself away; that he’s said too much at once. Arthur smiles unkindly, his eyes sly.

“What are you, some groupie?”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, I think you want to.”

A breathy giggle escapes Arthur this time, not the jagged scrape of vocal cords from before; an airy titter that Travis supposes must be his real laugh. 

Travis feels his face going red. Arthur looks entirely too pleased with himself for someone currently chained to a chair in an asylum.

“Ugh, you’re so _serious_ ”, he says as he takes in Travis’ forlorn expression, an exaggerated roll of his eyes that reminds Travis of his bit on The Murray Franklin Show. He can almost imagine the blue paint under his brows, the red of his mouth. Visualizing it doesn’t help the searing embarrassment steadily working its way into Travis’ skin.

“I just don’t think that this is funny, is all. I came here to tell you how I feel and you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Arthur pouts, his free hand miming a cross against his chest in some bastardization of a Hail Mary. “Scout’s honor.”

Travis feels himself losing control. He has to consciously uncurl his fists underneath the table.

“So that’s it then? You don’t care?”

Arthur lets out another plume, looking more frustrated than he’s ever let on. “Care about what?”

“Having someone in your corner. Who actually wants to...” he struggles to find the word, “be there for you.”

“God, you’re worse than a fucking groupie,” Arthur scoffs. “At least they know what they want. You’re here because you want to understand me, see into my _soul_ ,” he mocks, flinging a hand dramatically across his forehead. “It’s a load of bullshit—all of it. This system. This city. These goddamn shrinks. They’re all liars. And you’re just like the rest of ‘em”, he snarls, visibly angry now, taking agitated pulls from his cigarette as he glares at Travis.

Travis stares at him for a long time afterwards, anger and hurt battling for space in his head. He starts to speak, but stops, struggling to get the words out in the face of Arthur’s cold rage. Now they seem silly; the pleas of a boy clinging onto his mother’s skirt in reckless desperation, some empty declaration of need. A final: _Please look at me, I’m a good boy._

It seems almost absurd that this is where his life has taken him— begging for scraps of affection from a man not quite old enough to be his father. A man who’s killed five people no less. _Same as you_ , his mind unhelpfully provides.

Travis closes his eyes and exhales, feels another headache coming on.

_Why did I even come here?_

He hesitates again, eyes still closed. When he finally forces himself to push through the sudden heaviness in his throat, his jaw is tense.

Then he speaks, and the words come pouring out of him:

“I was tired of all the bullshit from back home, the phoniness. So I just left. Moved here with just my taxi and the clothes I could fit in a suitcase, hoping to start somewhere else. But nothing seemed to fix the emptiness. I think there’s just something wrong with me. And I was… I was still so lonely, you know? Like it’d been weighing on me my whole life and I just realized it then.”

He swallows. “So that night I decided I was gonna kill myself. I’d bought a bottle of whiskey and a gun. Six billets in the chamber. Had everything set up. Watch some TV, get drunk enough, and then blow my fucking brains out.

But then Murray came on— _you_ came on—and you were just so— You were beautiful up there. I’ve never seen anybody like you before. The way you moved, the things you said about this whole fucking world. I felt like you were talking to me. But most of all, when he was making fun of you, I could see it: the loneliness in your eyes. And when you shot him I just felt… relieved, you know? I kept thinking, ‘Here’s a guy who understands. Here’s a man who would not take it anymore.’ A hero. And I knew I just had to meet you.

And I know that it’s stupid and dumb or whatever else you’re gonna say, but that’s the truth.”

When Travis finally looks up, Arthur is staring at him with an unguarded, rapt expression on his face, as though truly seeing him for the first time. Travis watches as some unknown emotion bubbles precariously in his throat.

Arthur moves his lips to speak when suddenly a shrill buzzer interrupts him.

“Time’s up!” Sean’s voice yells from outside the door.

Arthur is still looking at Travis with that quiet, vulnerable expression when the two orderlies enter the room and begin to unwind the chain from his chair and handcuffs. Jeff quickly discards the cigarette, looking more annoyed now than he had been previously.

They start gripping Arthur by the forearms to haul him up from the chair just as he turns to Travis and says quietly, “Did you really mean all of that? What you said...?” _About me_ is implied.

Travis stands up, facing Arthur shakily. “Yeah,” he replies.

Arthur’s brows furrow. “Then you’re crazy enough to belong in here,” Arthur snaps, but there’s no real heat behind words. Just disbelief.

“I know.”

Arthur just blinks once at that, pale eyes searching Travis’ face as if uncovering some truth.

He's still looking at Travis when they lead him out of the room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reminder, this story deals with dark themes and mental unwellness, and while I'm aware that for many of us stories like this can be therapeutic, it's also really important that we take care of ourselves, so—just leaving these support resources for anyone who might need them: 1-800-273-8255 or text HELLO to 741741.
> 
> Thank you again to RovingOtter for being my first set of eyes on this chapter.

**Chapter 2**

Arthur finds himself thinking a lot these days, more than he ever could back when he was drowning.

At home, when he lived with Penny, time had always felt like a constant rush of atoms against flesh, a footrace up steep steps before the world around him imploded. But here, in the derelict tomb of his cell, he has nothing but time. He measures it out in plastic hospital spoons and flimsy paper cups, the rattling of multicolored pills in his palm.

_But_ _this is a different kind of drowning_ , he thinks.

A self-inflicted numbness that he supposes may be a consequence of his own martyrdom or an aftereffect of the drug cocktail that they insist he choke down morning, noon, and night. 

The psychiatrists tell him that the tiny white pills will help “stabilize his mood,” that they’ll make him happier, and he has to resist the urge to laugh in their faces during sessions.

Though sometimes he does laugh anyway, despite their obvious discomfort—in spite of it, actually. Because it feels like a punchline to a joke that’s been told before.

Man is sick. Man takes medicine. Man gets better. Society cheers.

People sure do love the concept of a happy ending. The reality is something else entirely.

\---------------------------------------------

The long elevator ride back to the eighth floor maximum security wing is fraught with uncomfortable, chilling silence. Jeff and Sean stand on either side of him like unsmiling statues, gripping his arms tight enough to bruise.

So when they escort him back into his cell on the far side of the block and Jeff says to Sean, “Give me a minute,” Arthur isn’t entirely surprised.

Jeff wouldn’t be the first disgruntled orderly at Arkham to seek personal retribution for Arthur’s mouthiness. Something about his comedic delivery always seems to rub them the wrong way and Arthur can’t help but suspect that it has something to do with the soft lilt to his voice, the theatrical movement of his hands, the way his eyes roved over Travis’ face with obvious interest.

“What? Why?” Sean asks Jeff, bristling .

“Just make sure no one’s coming.”  
  


“Aw, come on man, don’t—“

“Just shut the fuck up and guard the door.”

Sean looks like he wants to protest further, but in the end his fear of conflict overwhelms any moral obligation to his post, because he walks away instead as a compromise, leaving Jeff standing in the doorway to Arthur’s cell as he mutters, “Fuck, I don’t get paid enough for this shit.”  
  


And throughout it all, Arthur sits there watching the exchange tensely from his perch on the bed, cuffed hands balled into fists on his lap.

When they’re all alone Jeff turns to him with a cruel smile and says, “You must’ve thought you were real fucking funny in there, didn’t you, Freak?”

Arthur doesn’t answer. He holds Jeff’s tetchy blue gaze, unflinching.

The lack of reaction on Arthur's face only seems to irritate Jeff further. He closes the cell door behind himself, shielding the inside view of the room from anyone walking by. He moves to the center of the small cell, facing Arthur.

“They told me about you,” he says, too casually. “How you like to rile people up.”

Jeff keeps talking, as if Arthur’s silence is conversation.

“How you think you're hot shit in here—a real tough guy. Got all the doctors wrapped around your finger, afraid to make a move.” 

Jeff steps away from the door, moves further into the room, closer to the bed where Arthur sits. Arthur stares blankly at the center of Jeff’s chest to ignore him, notices the grey sweat stains there.

“But I’m not scared of you,” Jeff continues, pointedly. He sneers. “Because underneath all of that crazy shit you pull, you’re still just a fucking freak in makeup.”

Arthur’s eyes are hard as glass, watching Jeff warily, his body tensed to react.

Jeff’s staring at him now, sizing him up—gaze flickering over Arthur’s pale face and thin shoulders—and his expression shifts to something Arthur immediately dislikes, a weird, nervous sheen in his eyes.

Jeff starts rubbing the fingers of his right hand together, as though he doesn’t know what to do with them. Then he reaches out, hands shaky, and runs his thumb along Arthur’s cheekbone, near his mouth.

Arthur instantly recoils, whipping his head sharply to the side to displace Jeff’s sweaty palm. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarls, eyes blazing.

“You don’t like that?” Jeff mocks, pulling his hand back. He’s breathing heavier now, like the thought of Arthur’s resistance excites him.

Arthur is silent, mind whirring as he processes the unnatural, oily quality that this interaction has taken on. He feels like he’s trapped in a crawlspace, staring down the barrel of a loaded revolver. Jeff’s got a good five inches on him in height and a hell of a lot more in weight and muscle, and Arthur knows immediately that he needs to act soon.

Jeff chuckles to himself when he sees the sour twist of disgust on Arthur’s mouth, the anger burning in his eyes. He pulls out a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his pants pocket and dangles it near Arthur’s face, as if presenting a dog with a bone. “These calm you down, right?”

Despite himself, Arthur's eyes follow the stick wearily, his body craving nicotine even more now in the face of the panic he feels bubbling in his chest. He forces himself to look away from it.

Jeff notices, his eyes glinting.

“I’ll tell you what,” Jeff breathes, looming over Arthur’s seated form, face at eye level. “I’ll give you another one if you’re good.”

He swallows once, glances at Arthur’s lips. “It’s only fair since you cost me a cigarette earlier. ‘Our little secret’, remember?”

Arthur’s forehead collides with Jeff’s skull so hard that Jeff stumbles backwards a step and hollers, clutching his bleeding face and gurgling.

And then Jeff is swinging back and hitting him so hard across the mouth that Arthur’s teeth rattle.

Arthur lands on the ground, stunned, his head ringing.

From his sprawled position on the floor, Arthur touches a tentative hand to the blood oozing from his open mouth and starts laughing reflexively, a high pitched giggle that makes his eyes water. 

This seems to piss Jeff off even more, who starts throwing clumsy kicks at Arthur’s back, his ruddy complexion now splotchy and red. He looks like an ugly tomato, and the thought leaves Arthur laughing harder now, even as he tastes blood in his mouth and his ribs ache.

The loud pitch of the laughter startles Jeff, who stands there like a log, looking angry and confused, like he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to have planned for this sort of thing.

“What’s so funny, bitch?”

Arthur gives him an answer by kicking his ankle so hard that there’s a sickening crunch, both of Jeff’s legs collapsing out from under him. It’s like a cartoon, the way that he falls flat on his back, groaning like a wounded buffalo.

The sheer look of terror in his wide eyes when Arthur straddles him, wraps both hands around this throat, and presses in— _hard_ —is electrifying.

Arthur can’t help but find it hilarious that Jeff, for all of his talk, is unable to now, spluttering like a beached fish, attempting unsuccessfully to buck Arthur off with the weight of his body. Arthur feels his head go white and fuzzy— _TV static_ —as he tightens his vice grip on Jeff’s neck.

It’s only when Sean comes running to the half-open door, looking panicked and yells, “Help! It’s Fleck! He’s got Jeff!” that Arthur realizes that his fun is over.

His blood is still coursing with adrenaline from the sudden blows to his face and body, and he stares at Jeff’s twitching features with a barely concealed rage that vibrates through him, his fingers around Jeff’s throat shaking with it— constricting. Three men rush into his open cell and forcibly drag him off of Jeff, who lies there, looking for all the world like a corpse even though one of the men takes his pulse and says, “Thank God, he’s still breathing.”

_Thank God._

Arthur fights viciously as they tussle him to the ground, one man placing a knee in his back to keep him still, the other yelling for a syringe. With his cheek pressed into the concrete floor of his cell, Arthur is able to make eye contact with Sean, who, throughout the entire ordeal had remained standing by the open door uselessly, a horrified expression on his face.

Arthur smiles as wide as his bloodstained mouth allows, pleased when Sean stumbles away from the door and takes off running, his shoes squeaking on the hospital linoleum. That’s the last thing he remembers before he feels a pinprick in his thigh and his head goes empty.

\---------------------------------------------

Arthur wakes up on the thin mattress of his cell, bleary-eyed and disoriented. The moonlight shining through his tiny barred window tells him that it’s nighttime, which must mean that he's been out for more than twelve hours.

And he's wearing a straitjacket.

This information should upset him, but it doesn’t.

Even when he’s confronted with the soul-crushing realization that the smothering weight of his own arm is the only form of affection he’ll ever receive in a place like this.

_For the rest of my life._

That, too, should bother him. Maybe it would if the drugs weren’t blunting his emotions.

The crusted blood on his nose itches slightly and he wishes that his hands were free so that he could do something about it.

Unable to cry, he wriggles into a sitting position on his bed, pressing his back to the wall for support. This head feels unmoored and heavy with cotton as he rests his temple against the cool concrete, hair spilling into his face like a curtain.

It’s funny, really, how little he feels.

Arthur knew that Jeff wouldn’t take too kindly to his little vaudeville performance in the visiting room.

The attendants here never do. Which is why Arthur had done it anyway, just to watch him squirm, _the fat fuck_. But it's moments like this, where he can barely move—because his side is still throbbing and his face is burning something awful—that he has to wonder who these masochistic power-plays are really for.

Arthur’s come to learn that people always hurt things that they don’t understand, and distantly, Arthur wonders if that’s why Jeff did it—because he’s afraid. Maybe that’s why everyone who’s ever debased Arthur has done it. Maybe reducing him to nothing finally allows them to confront their own terror; to demythologize the monster that they all think that he is.

Or maybe it’s something even more sinister. Flickering images of dirty carpets and radiator burns stare back at him, the caving of his own small skull by a heavy male hand. Maybe some men need to hurt others so that they can appease their own self-loathing.

When he thinks about what happened this morning, he isn’t entirely sure which explanation is responsible.

All he knows is that the clawing emptiness he feels in his chest is threatening to overtake him. And for a moment he’s almost grateful for the restraints of the jacket, afraid of what he might have done to himself if his hands were free.

Maybe smash his fists against the wall until his fingers are bloody. Slice open his wrists on the sharpest part of the bed.

Arthur closes his eyes, tries to imagine that he’s somewhere else, poised atop a flaming police car, battered but triumphant in his red suit and paint. A crowd watches him, awed, as he spins and dips. The music in his head is loud enough for them to hear too. A violent cello.

_That’s life, and as funny as it may seem, some people get their kicks, stompin’ on a dream. But I won’t let it… I won’t let it get me down..._

Arthur smiles a little, a giggle escaping his throat in lieu of a tear. He keeps drifting, his fantasies taking phantasmic shapes.

And while his thoughts run, he thinks about Travis.

Travis, who came to Arthur needy and wanting, with a sheen of desperation on his skin that Arthur fought hard not to find attractive, but did anyway. Travis, who gazed at him like he hung the stars, as if with a quick twist of his wrist, Arthur could disembody atoms and raze cities to the ground.

Arthur would be lying to himself if he said that the boy's hungry admiration wasn’t extremely appealing, even if a bit disconcerting.

The grinning creature in Arthur’s mind purrs thinking about how easy it would be to tie Travis to him forever, to make him his. It wouldn’t take very much, he can tell. Arthur senses that, like himself, Travis hasn’t ever known love, that there’s a brokenness inside of him that’s begging to be seen. Just a few sweet words, some touches, and Arthur knows that he would have him eating out of the palm of his hand.

The thought is...utterly intoxicating.

The idea of someone wanting him that much.

And yet, even with his sleepless, weary eyes and the grim set of his mouth, Travis looks young— _25 maybe?_ Far too young to be this invested in the impending train wreck that is Arthur’s life.

He’s either the most foolish man Arthur’s ever met or the most disturbed.

Arthur still hasn’t decided which yet. But he knows that he wants to see him again— _needs_ to see him again, if only to uncover the source of the black tangle of weeds he senses unfurling within Travis’ skull.

Although he’s aware that seeing Travis now might be impossible. Given what happened with Jeff earlier, the hospital might just put a permanent ban on all of his visiting hours, out of sheer pettiness and camaraderie for their fallen fat friend if nothing else.

Arthur giggles internally at the alliteration. _Fallen fat friend—F-F-F. What rhymes with Friend, kids?! Fiend!_

Never mind the fact that Jeff’s a predatory piece of shit. Never mind the fact that Arthur’s almost certain now that he’s done something like this before, to someone else.

But it’s not like they’ll believe Arthur if he tells them. So he won’t.

He’ll let them think what they’re going to think regardless; that Arthur is deranged and unhinged and lunatic; that he attacked an innocent man doing his job because he’s sadistic and cruel. _Sociopathic_ , his last shrink had called him. _Well look where that got her._

He’s almost certain that Jeff will make up some lie to explain why he was alone in a patient’s cell to begin with—especially Arthur Fleck’s. They’ll probably send him flowers and Get Well Soon cards with little cartoon cats on them. 

The headline will read: _Civil servant attacked by notorious killer clown!_

And they’ll use a picture of Arthur that he hates— one where he’s manic and inconsolable—as proof of his lunacy.

Carefully, Arthur lies down on his small cot, the sounds of the city far below creating a dreamscape of noise.

He misses Gotham more now than he ever did before; and yet still, he hates it.

He thinks of Travis’ warm, candid brown eyes and drifts.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read and commented on the last two chapters! This chapter took a lot longer for me to write than anticipated, but I think that it's really important for the story moving forward. As always, please let me know your thoughts.

**Chapter 3**

It’s nearly dark out when Travis pulls up to his worn brick apartment building on the other side of the city, the sky a purpling midnight bruise. A single lamp post out front illuminates his taxi in scant yellow light as he parks on the curb.

It's a hole-in-the-wall, four stories high with a barbed wire fence for a courtyard, but it was the cheapest thing he could afford when he moved here. A small, squat building with dirty windows and rusty fire escapes. Not much different from his apartment in New York. 

Casting one last look at the chipped brick, Travis gets out of his taxi and locks it for the night, feeling increasingly groggy.

His head is still reeling from sleep deprivation and his surreal encounter with Arthur Fleck. His eyes are so bleary that he barely registers the cry of a dog barking in the distance, the sharp clang of a pan falling in a nearby kitchen.

His neighborhood always feels like this—inhabited yet desolate at the same time. Isolated noises that come and go.

Nobody’s on the street. Nobody ever is.

Travis makes his way to the front of the building, puts his key in the metal door, and steps into the small lobby, trying his best to ignore the old garbage smell that hits his nose on the way in. The stench makes his eyes water, burns his nostrils.

The garbage strikes are still ongoing, and he hates that no one’s doing anything about it. Trash is piling up in the streets, bringing rats and roaches and filth, and the only thing politicians like Palatine and Thomas Wayne have to say for it is: “Something will be done. I promise.”

_But when?_

Although, it’s not like Thomas Wayne is even a factor anymore. Travis didn’t know too much about him before he moved to Gotham, but apparently the poor bastard was murdered on the same night that Arthur shot Murray. Killed alongside his wife in a back alley by some weirdo in a clown mask, their kid watching the whole thing in shock. Pretty fucked up, if you ask Travis. Not that a rich prick like Thomas Wayne was gunned down, but that the kid was there.

No kid should have to see that.

Then Travis thinks about Iris’ fearful, pinched face as she watched him pull the trigger on the john and then empty the clip on himself. The way she shrank away from Travis in horror.

He winces at the memory, suddenly not so sure anymore.

Travis rubs his face, feels the ache in his temple again. Decides it wouldn’t do him any good to dwell on it, not on Iris or the stench or Wayne or any of it. Either way, this city’s rotting from the inside out, and no amount of protest or empty words is going to change that.

Holding his breath, Travis makes his way past the overflowing trash compactor, up the narrow staircase to the third floor. 

When Travis steps into his dark apartment, it’s with an exhaustion he hasn't felt fully until now. He flicks on the light switch near the door and a single white bulb illuminates the small, cramped space. Kitchen, couch, bedroom. A tiny hallway with a bathroom. No real decorations to make the place feel lived-in.

Travis takes a seat at the small wooden table that he’s propped up against the living room window as a mock-desk, near the fire escape. Littering its surface are old newspaper articles, an ink pen, and a pair of dull scissors. Arthur’s grinning harlequin face stares back at him from the black and white pages of the Gotham Gazette; an article dated a few months ago titled:

TROUBLED MAN KILLS CO-WORKER BEFORE APPEARING ON THE MURRAY FRANKLIN SHOW

_by Vanessa Coles September 7, 1981_

_A 41 year old man named Arthur Fleck is being arraigned in court today over the deaths of 5 Gotham City residents: Wayne Enterprise employees Mark Fitzpatrick (29), Daniel O’Doherty (31), and Teddy Fisher (27); late night talk show host Murray Franklin (63); and Randall Tibbs (45), a former coworker from the clown agency where Fleck was fired earlier this month for brandishing a gun._

_Fleck arrived at Gotham Judicial Court smiling, despite the admonishments of his court-appointed lawyer, Jonathan Clark. Fleck plead guilty to 5 counts of first degree murder, and then proceeded to ask the court if he could go to bed. “I’m honestly tired from all of this and I’d like a nap,” he can be heard saying to shocked onlookers._

_Citing his documented history of mental illness as well as his bizarre courtroom behavior, Judge Judith Russell sentenced Fleck to life in Arkham Asylum, Gotham City’s maximum security psychiatric facility, where he will receive state-mandated treatment._

_Fleck rose to infamy earlier this month after killing beloved talk show host, Murray Franklin while being featured as a live guest on his show. During his appearance, Fleck went on an incoherent rant and confessed to the triple homicide subway murders before fatally wounding Franklin._

Travis remembers reading an article once about someone who used to know Arthur; someone who claims to have been friends with him back when he was a clown. The guy wanted his identity kept a secret, so he didn’t provide his name. But he’d said that the Arthur that he knew was a nice guy; never raised his voice, loved singing to kids and making balloon animals and magic tricks.

The guy also said that Arthur had a sick mother that meant the world to him, that Arthur took real good care of her.

It’s really hard for Travis to reconcile the idea of that kind, meek person with the man he met today—this chaotic being who openly delights in cruelty and laughs at other people's expense. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the cool rage that he saw swimming beneath Joker’s playful smiles.

It makes Travis wonder what happened to Arthur. To make him change so completely.

_The same thing that happened to you, probably._

Although that’s not entirely true, because Travis has never really changed; the nothingness at the core of his person has been about the only constant in his life. Travis wouldn’t expect someone from his past to claim that he’s nothing like he used to be. As far as he can remember, he’s always been like this—empty, listless, and starved inside.

Travis takes off his shoes, walks barefoot to the fridge to grab himself a beer. Sits on the couch, sipping without really tasting anything.

He wonders if Arthur regrets anything that he’s done, if he wishes he could go back to the seemingly nice man he was before—taking his medication like he was supposed to, avoiding fights, making sick kids smile and laugh.

It makes Travis wonder if he himself is just one bad day away from being in Arthur’s situation—just one fucked up day away from being branded too insane by society and thrown into a locked cage for its own protection. Then he starts to wonder if he’s already reached that point. Thinks that maybe it happened in Vietnam when his brain got scrambled, or during his plan to murder Palatine, or the pimp killings— and that, since then, he’s just been walking through life like a reanimated corpse, existing on borrowed time.

After all, he’s still got a lot of bad ideas in his head. 

_Always have._

Travis walks over to his desk, sits down, and studies Arthur’s grinning white face—the dimpled pull of his cheek and the wide, luminous eyes staring back at him as if through some two-way mirror.

Travis thinks that the papers got his eyes wrong somehow. That the black printer ink doesn’t quite capture the way light hits them in a white room. Travis remembers being startled by just how green they are up close, how instantly captivating.

Then he thinks about the sudden childlike vulnerability that he glimpsed in those eyes as Arthur was being led away from the room, gazing at Travis for all the world like he’d just discovered the answer to something he couldn’t understand, something that scared him. 

At that moment, Travis had felt a terrifying sort of helplessness—an overwhelming need to know that small, hidden part of Arthur so badly that his teeth ached. The intensity of his want has been gnawing at him ever since.

Travis stands up, pulls out a dusty record from behind his TV and drops the thin needle. 

_What you won't do, to do for love_

_You tried everything but you don't give up_

_In my world only you_

_Make me do for love what I would not do_

***********************************

When Travis makes the long drive to Arkham around noon the next day, it’s cold and raining—thick sheets of water that blur oncoming traffic lights into smatterings of red and green. Travis has to squint just to safely navigate through the streets, but he doesn’t mind it too much. His thoughts are otherwise preoccupied with the prospect of seeing Arthur again, if only to prove that what happened yesterday was real, not some drummed up, reenacted fantasy from his head. Travis doesn’t know what he’d do if that turned out to be the case.

He’s vibrating with nerves and anticipation and an overwhelming fear he can’t find words to describe.

Travis checks his eyes once in the rearview mirror and, not for the first time, wonders what the hell he’s doing here. It would be so easy to turn around. To not subject himself to the grating belittlement and disdain from yesterday, Arthur’s wrath-like rage and mocking disregard for Travis’ own pathetic attempts at feelings.

But then Travis thinks about the unspoken, raw emotion spilling from Arthur’s eyes and he knows right then with certainty that he can’t control this nebulous thing unfurling within him any more now than he could a month ago, especially now that he’s met Joker in person—experienced his otherworldly brilliance firsthand.

When Travis arrives at Arkham some time later, he parks the taxi in the designated visitor lot and makes a run for the building, shielding his head with his arms and an old newspaper that he found in his car to escape the brunt of the rain. He’s not very successful, if the puddle forming around his feet in the dimly lit lobby is any indication. He throws the soggy paper into the trash and makes his way to the patient intake floor.

The elevator ride to the first floor is smooth except for the crying wheelchaired man being consoled by two doctors in lab coats. Travis keeps to his own corner and is bolting with relief when the doors open.

But as soon as he approaches the front desk, Travis immediately knows that something’s wrong. James the clerk gives him an apologetic frown that puts him on edge.

“What?” Travis asks, before James can give him some bullshit pleasantry.

He sighs. “Sorry my, man. But, um, Fleck isn’t allowed to have visitors right now.”

“Says who?” Travis grinds out. He can barely focus with his thoughts spinning.

A deep exhale. “The hospital director. His therapist. I can’t really tell you anything more than that. Just know that I’m sorry you came all this way.”

“Well when can I see him, then?” Travis asks, impatient.

Another deep exhale and a wary glance. “Um, probably not for a while? Another few weeks, if I had to guess. Like I said, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

Travis doesn’t know how to process this information. His head is turning in erratic circles. _What did he do?_ he wonders at first. Then, just as quickly, _What did_ they _do?_

Fighting through his mounting panic, Travis manages to shake his head once in some semblance of a nod. “Thanks,” he croaks tersely.

Then he’s shoving both hands into the pockets of his military jacket and striding down the hall, back the way he came.

Through white labyrinthine hallways and heavy fire doors, down the stairwell to the desolate lobby.

Into the cold rain that pelts his hair and face,

Back into the dry reprieve of his taxi.

He sits there, dripping. Staring at his trembling hands. Then he punches his steering wheel so hard that pigeons roosting on a nearby building fly away in a frenzy. Several people with umbrellas startle as they walk by.

Travis stares out of the windshield feeling lost.

***********************************

That night when Travis manages to fall asleep, he has a dream that he’s burning alive. Huge palms away in the wind, the roar of a helicopter engine touching down. Travis is running for the aircraft, screaming at the top of his lungs for it to stop when it spirals out of control and unleashes a wall of hellfire and shrapnel that eviscerates him.

He wakes up, alone and hollering, his heart on the verge of a panic, head hammering. He drags himself out of bed, sheets and all, and curls up huddled and shaking in his shower. The cold spray leaves his teeth chattering and his sheets drenched, but his mind goes numb. He wraps his arms around himself until the burning stops.

The next morning he wakes up like that, drenched and cold in the tub, eyes crusty with sleep, mouth sticky. He stands up, leaves the wet sheets where they are in the tub, and shakily opens his medicine cabinet. Spots his anxiety pills and takes them dry. He needs to refill them, but he hasn’t seen his counselor in a while. Isn’t sure when he’ll see him again now that he's moved.

He leans over his sink like an old man, body damp and aching from his cramped sleep position, and tries to look at himself in the smudged mirror.

Travis never really thought that he was much of a looker. Not ugly, but definitely not like the bigshot actors on TV with their slicked back hair, tailored suits, and debonair smiles. _Like Joker_ , he thinks before he can stop the thought. He fights the sudden flutter in his gut.

Travis has always thought that he looked pretty plain in comparison; brown hair that sort of just lays there; brown eyes. His only distinguishing features being the mole on his right cheek; the fact that he’s naturally lean and keeps himself in shape.

And right now he feels so tired that he can barely hold onto the sink. Which he knows doesn’t help.

Travis wets his face. Once, twice. Feels his teeth with his tongue.

This was his first attempt at sleep for nearly two days, and it ended the way it always has these past few months—with blood and screams and a smothering sense of dread.

Travis stares at the thin bruised circles beneath his eyes. He knows that he looks like shit. And that should alarm him, but somehow, all he can think about despite the pounding in his head is that he needs to see Arthur again. His sleep-addled brain knows it with a searing intensity. 

When Travis crawls back into bed, sweaty and fatigued, he dreams of bloody hands and bullet showers, the smell of molten flesh. But this time as he’s burning, it’s Arthur’s pale face that he sees gazing down at him—the cold, kind eyes of death.

Travis smiles at him through tears, serene.

***********************************

It’s later the next evening—while he’s sitting at the table in a plaid shirt and fresh boxers, eating soggy cornflakes for dinner and rewatching the Murray tape for the third time this week—when Travis comes up with the idea.

Joker’s performing his knock-knock joke, the one about the drunk driver, and Franklin’s squinching up his face into a tight grimace.

“Yeah, that’s not _funny_ , Arthur. That’s not the kind of humor we do on this show.”

Joker shakes his head shyly, eyes cast down so that his long lashes touch his white cheeks and says, “Okay… Yeah, you’re right…”

_God he’s...beautiful_ , Travis thinks with a nervous hesitation.

It’s not the first time he’s thought so, but it is the first time he’s allowed himself to think about what it means. About himself.

Memories that he’d kept hidden come flooding to him, trickling into his consciousness.

Things he’s tried real hard to forget about.

Like the time his father caught him holding hands with another boy from his building, dragged him into their apartment complex and belted Travis viciously— his mother screaming at him to stop, trying unsuccessfully to step between them. Travis couldn’t walk for a few days after that—couldn’t go to school either.

_I didn’t raise no faggot_ , Travis can remember his father hollering over the sounds of his own broken wailing.

Travis was 13 then.

For days, weeks, years afterwards his father didn’t talk about the incident and Travis pretended that it never happened, that he’d dreamt it all up by mistake like some fucked up nightmare. Instead he threw himself into fucking girls (the few times they’d let him, anyway), lifting weights. All the shit that guys do to feel like they exist. He even made himself seem excited about the draft, even though his stomach was a bottomless pit at the thought of blood.

A landmine goes off in his head, human viscera scattered everywhere, staining his skin. _MEDIC!!!!_

Travis stops eating. His spoon hits the table with a clank. He breathes out deeply though his nose to steady himself.

The TV is still playing distantly in the background, the horrified screams of audience members as they frantically scramble from their seats. Arthur’s doing his little dance on stage, plopping the gun onto Murray’s desk like it burns his fingers to the touch.

Travis watches as he skips over to the camera dolly and grips it with both hands. “And just remember,” he smiles gleefully, tear-tracks staining his makeup, “that’s l—”

The tape goes blank when the police tackle him, and Travis stares back at his own reflection in the black screen from across the small room, feeling a vague sense of emptiness.

The ending has always felt kind of anticlimactic to Travis, in part because he’s watched it more times than he can count, but mostly because a larger-than-life figure like Joker being taken down by some two-bit cops before he can finish his act feels like a crime in itself. And sure, it pisses Travis off, but he’s never found himself dwelling on it too much.

And yet for some reason, right now he finds himself doing just that.

In the evening light of his sterile apartment, the abrupt ending feels like a metaphor for something else—Travis’ inevitable loneliness maybe, or Arthur’s. A reminder to himself that he’s rewatching the tape in the first place because, like a child clinging to a dirty sleep blanket for comfort, he’s desperately afraid that he might not ever get to see Arthur again.

To have gotten this close to Arthur only to have contact ripped away from him feels like God’s fucked up idea of torture —a punishment, maybe, for Travis’ many misdeeds.

And he knows that he’s not a good man, knows it with everything he’s got, but shouldn’t even soulless bastards like him get a chance? _A chance at... being understood?_

Travis’ chest is starting to burn with a slow, persistent tangle of emotions that he can’t even begin to identify, let alone deal with right now, and he hates it.

His head is fucking pounding.

Rubbing a hand through his hair to stave off the mounting panic, Travis stands up too fast in his rickety wooden chair and almost trips, just barely catching himself with a firm hand to the wall.

It’s getting hard for him to focus on anything outside of his own skull and the hole in his chest feels like it’s expanding and Travis wants nothing more than to pace the length of his apartment with restless energy, if only to give his hands and legs something to do. Instead he drags himself over to the kitchen sink, pours a glass of water, plops in an Alka-Seltzer, and swallows it whole before it’s done dissolving.

Then, through the inescapable haze of his own mental unrest and self-pity, the idea occurs to him.

That if he can’t see Arthur, he’ll write to him instead.

And intuitively, Travis knows that it’s a long shot; knows that maybe his brain fucked up again and he misread Arthur’s apathy for interest. Knows that it’s possible that Joker never wants to see Travis again, let alone get a letter from him.

But Travis also knows that, with the state he’s in right now, he's just a few bad thoughts away from holding his fist to the gas flame of his stove—just to feel anything else besides the nauseating fear churning inside of him.

So he makes up his mind at that moment that he’s going to try anyway, even if the possibility of Arthur writing him back is slim to none.

Because it’s either that, or it’s Travis sitting here in his apartment for however long Arthur’s confinement lasts, losing his fucking mind over a man he’s dreamt about everyday but has only met once, no less. 

So he starts writing, nervous scrawls on loose-leaf that don’t have much in the way of poetry. Travis has never believed that he was a smooth-talker, knows that he doesn’t really have a way with words, but he tries his best to convey feelings he’s never felt before—ideas he’s never spoken out loud, not even to his shrinks.

_Sometimes I think about fucking you, and I can’t help but feel disgusted with myself. I used to think that people like that were degenerates, filthy and unclean. I still feel that way sometimes, that I’m dirty. But when I look at you I think that you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and I realize that it’s not wrong. How I feel._

_I had a bad dream the other night, that I was dying. You were holding me like an angel and I died staring at your face._

_I want to be anything you want me to be._

_I feel so lost sometimes._

_Do you have any family? Anybody you ever cared about? I don’t talk to my family much. Especially not my old man. The last time we talked we got into a real bad fight. He told me I was better off dead. Sometimes I think he was right._

_You ever have any bad thoughts? I’ve got lots of them, so many fucked up ideas that I don’t know what to do with them. I try talking about it sometimes, but nobody really understands or wants to listen. It probably just sounds crazy. But it makes me feel like the loneliest man in the world._

_I tried to see you, but they told me I couldn’t._

_I wanted to burn the hospital to the ground._

The words keep pouring out, unbidden, and Travis writes until his mind goes blank, the panicked frenzy of earlier replaced by a calm exhaustion. When he stops, he’s distantly aware that his hand is cramping and that the sun has set over his left shoulder, casting the room in near shadow. As Travis stares at the sizable collection of notes, a creeping embarrassment starts to settle over him that makes him want to tear them all up, if only so that he doesn’t have to confront his own dark secrets, laid bare on the dirty wooden table.

Travis stares at the margins on the paper for a long while, covered in cold sweat and uncertainty.

Then, in a moment of spontaneity, he jumps up from his seat and makes himself get dressed in the near dark, tugging jeans over his hips and haphazardly buttoning his shirt.

Travis quickly gathers the letters into a pile, seals them in old envelopes from a tiny tin he keeps above the fridge, and leaves his apartment in a rush, taking the stairs two at a time. When he spots the peeling blue mailbox on the corner, he shoves the envelopes in almost violently before he can talk himself out of it.

Then he’s jumping into the front seat of his car and starting it up before he’s even made the conscious decision to do so. Travis swallows, flexes his fingers on the steering wheel.

He makes eye contact with himself in the rearview mirror and thinks, _What the fuck did you just do?_

He swings the taxi into reverse in lieu of an answer, peeling out into the street in search of a fare—an echoing squeal of tires on asphalt.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this chapter taking so much longer than I expected. "Life, uh, finds a way"-Jeff Goldblum. But have no fear, this story will continue; I have so much planned. Much thanks to RovingOtter for being my first pair of eyes.

**Chapter 4**

Arthur lies in bed—curled on his side, arms wrapped around himself in an involuntary hug—and stares, unseeing at the painted-over white wall of his concrete cell.

He feels catatonic, his limbs heavy and still.

He barely registers the squeaking wheels of the med cart from down hall. 

A nurse—who Arthur has affectionately come to think of as Ms. Chuckles because of her jubilant laugh— calls his name, taps on his cell door. His head is a haze of storm clouds, his eyelids drooping and unfocused.

When the door unlocks with a jangle of keys, she’s pushing the cart into his cell with a practiced ease. There’s a tall older man behind her standing silent sentry near the door; overseeing the interaction to ensure her safety. 

_And to prevent patients from trying to escape._

The man’s eyes always seem empty to Arthur, and today is no exception. He always has a vague moue of disapproval on his face, as though he dislikes the sick people that he’s forced to treat.

The nurse rolls the cart over to the bed and steps into Arthur’s field of vision.

“Come on, hun,” she says, petting his hair.

When he doesn’t react, she takes the small paper cup with his assortment of pills in one hand and a cup filled with water in another. With a practiced ease, she presses her thumb to his lower lip, opens his mouth, drops the pills in, and washes them down with water.

Arthur swallows automatically, his jaw working on muscle memory. The straitjacket feels too heavy on his skin.

“Good,” she says, disposing of the cups and reaching for a plastic spoon.

Arthur knows what comes next; hates it.

She pulls out a dinner tray with a bowl of vile-looking porridge and proceeds to spoon-feed him. His drug-addled brain barely processes the infantile nature of the action.

Afterwards, she pets his hair gently again as if in apology. Arthur likes to think that her soft touch is an act of pseudo-solidarity, a way of saying, _I understand that you’re suffering_ —but in all likelihood, it’s just a reflexive response to pity.

Then she’s putting the bowl back on the cart and disappearing the way she came, leaving Arthur alone again, bereft of any human interaction until his next pill dosing.

Arthur starts to feel his eyes droop, experiences the unencumbered weight of his limbs, as though his body is a sinking ship.

With every slow blink, he feels himself being swallowed deeper into the mattress as though by the mouth of some great leviathan, struggling to claw his way out yet unable to stop the descent.

Alice sinking down the rabbit hole.

The last thing he understands, before his mind goes completely quiet, is that he wants to scream at the top of his lungs but can’t.

\---------------------------------------------

In the pending hellscape of his drug-induced subconscious, Arthur dreams of Travis, of all things.

He dreams that they meet in a bar, some dimly-lit, swanky place not unlike Pogo’s. A man is performing a lukewarm stand-up routine on stage, and Arthur is nestled somewhere in the back row of velvet seats, trying his best not to be seen. The moment feels like a long time ago, simultaneously past and present. 

Arthur fidgets with his hands and plays with the too-long sleeves of his sweater, casting nervous glances around the room. His joke journal is nowhere in sight.

And that’s when Arthur sees him, Travis, sitting at the bar in his olive jacket and jeans, looking the same way he did in the visiting room; stoic, yet filled with a frenzied sort of energy. 

Arthur watches him with an unguarded, rapt fascination as Travis downs a drink and then asks for another. Arthur finds himself trying to memorize the shape of his face, the square cut of his jaw, the way his lips move as he whispers to the bartender.

And then suddenly, Travis is catching his gaze, and as though entirely by coincidence, their eyes meet in what feels like the seismic collision of comets.

The old Arthur— the wilting wallflower who took small, measured sips from life— would have hastily looked away, panicked, and fled without so much as a word. But this fantasy version of Arthur, this surreal hybrid of his two selves, stands up and makes his way to Travis’ barstool with a leonine grace unbefitting his skittish demeanor.

Travis watches him as he approaches, his brown eyes alight with an awestruck hunger. He stares at Arthur’s slinking form as though he’s the last man on earth, and within the intimacy of this cozy dreamscape he very well may be.

Arthur doesn’t stop walking until he’s deliberately in Travis’ space, sliding into the adjacent bar seat and leaning in until their faces are a whisper apart—close enough to see the flecks of brown in Travis’ honeysuckle eyes.

Then, as if bending itself to Arthur’s sheer will, the velveteen theater room around them goes pitch black except for the bubble of spotlight that envelopes them both.

Suddenly Arthur is wearing his paint and his suit. Slicking back the verdant waves of his hair in an obvious preen.

Travis stares at his painted face in open fascination and Arthur lets him take his fill, basking in the hungry admiration he sees there.

“What do I call you?” Travis whispers, his voice so low and reverberating that Arthur can barely hear it. Travis’ eyes are wet, cavernous pools in his face, engulfing all light.

Arthur licks his red lips and smiles, a sprawling grin that crinkles his eyes.

“Joker.”

\---------------------------------------------

Arthur wakes up hours later—disoriented—with the violent urge to vomit. Dawn light trickles from the barred windows of his cell.

He’s sweaty and cold as he stumbles unceremoniously out of bed, crawling to the toilet without the use of his arms. He props himself against the metal rim, hair hanging limply in his face, knees burning against the freezing tiled floor.

He feels so weak that even a soft wind could knock him over. It’s a struggle to stay upright.

But being sick has always been easy to Arthur. It comes to him like a second skin.

And in no time at all, Arthur’s throwing up until his stomach hurts, until his throat goes hoarse and his dry heaves taper off into fits of strained laughter. He’s gasping for breath when it’s finished, little hiccups that make him lightheaded.

He lists to one side, steeling himself against the toilet for balance. 

Eventually, he falls asleep there, slumped over the bowl like a marionette with its strings cut.

\---------------------------------------------

The rest of the week continues much the same way, with Arthur curled in bed, transitioning in and out of consciousness, being fed pills and gruel, mentally fighting the urge to scream the entire time.

The only time Arthur's free of the suffocating straitjacket is when he’s being woken up in the early hours of the morning for his routine shower, which consists of washing himself lethargically with a bar of lye soap as he’s hosed down against a tiled bathroom wall. The two orderlies on duty have the dignity to look away as they drench his naked body with the nozzle, opting instead to make small talk about what they ate for dinner the other night; Gotham’s upcoming baseball game. As they talk amongst themselves, they barely seem to notice Arthur, boney and shivering under the unsteady lukewarm spray—only sparing a cursory glance at him to pass him a stiff towel and instruct that he get dressed.

Arthur dries off briskly, the rough towel harsh on his sensitive skin, and redresses in short, hasty movements—white elastic pants and a white short-sleeved shirt. No underwear lest he find some miraculous way to hang himself with them. A pair of standard hospital shoes.

A sidelong glance in one of the mirrors over the nearest sink tells Arthur that his hair is lying flat against his head, a dark mop dripping residual beads of water down the back of his neck. Despite being somewhat clean, it looks stringy and unkempt, and he hates it, and the single grey hair that he spots near his temple fills him with a sinking anxiety.

The entire left side of his face is a purpling yellow bruise.

_Fuck._

But before Arthur can even consider primping himself in the mirror, the two men—Chuck and Dan, he’s learned from their earlier conversation—tell him to stand against the wall with his legs and arms spread and begin fastening him back into the straitjacket immediately, casting wary glances at each other as though remembering for the first time why they’re here.

Lacking the energy to put up a fight in his drowsy, overmedicated state, Arthur silently acquiesces as they tug the jacket over his arms in rough, jerky motions. Despite the previous shock of the cold shower leaving his skin pimpled with gooseflesh, it’s currently becoming a struggle for Arthur to keep his eyes open. He wants nothing more than to go back to his cell and sleep, because at least in his dreams he’s spared these constant indignities, this feeling of being trapped like a rat in a small cage.

Arthur remembers the last time he’d “misbehaved” in Arkham. What happened after.

About a month ago, when he attacked that bitch Dr. Harris for trying to get into his head. Dr. Arkham had been absolutely furious, which had made Arthur incoherently gleeful at the time, but his excitement was short-lived when he began to understand just _what_ that meant in a place like this. A reduction in meals. Revoked shower access. An increase in medication that left his stomach twisting itself in knots from the side effects. But most devastatingly: being startled awake in the odd hours of the night by men twice his size, only to be subjected to what he can best describe as torturous mindfucks masquerading as psychiatry.

“Hydrotherapy,” the sick fuck had called it. Claimed that it would help “temper” Arthur’s “impulsivity and rage”. Arthur had tried to remember that as he was being submerged in a below-freezing ice bath, held down by heavy hands as he struggled—let up for air only when his legs and arms flailed against the edge of the tub in a suffocation-induced panic.

They drowned him until he stopped fighting, and then drowned him again when he started crying, threatening through chattering teeth to kill them all.

On those nights he couldn’t sleep, and his skin felt so frozen for hours afterwards that he began to wonder if he was truly dead or alive.

Arthur wonders if this time will be like that last time, or worse— that he’ll truly start to lose his mind, _what’s left of it_ , even more now than he already has in this terrible place.

What happens to a man when already he’s lost everything, yet has even more to lose?

As the orderlies fasten legs cuffs to his ankles and begin leading him back to the excruciating solitude of his cell, Arthur can’t help but wonder if madness piles up like a stack of playing cards, an ever-tilting tower that eventually collapses under the burden of its own weight.

\---------------------------------------------

The next morning, the med cart doesn’t come as scheduled, which Arthur finds odd, but decides not to question because he’d rather not spend this day like he has every other day this past week—doped up on sedatives and God knows what else, fighting to stay sane.

Without the drowsy aftereffects of the medication, Arthur almost feels like his normal self, albeit a little emotionally numb. But he prefers numbness to wanting to claw his skin off every night. So there’s that.

Arthur’s sense of triumph is short-lived, however, because a few hours later, while Arthur is recounting the tiles of his room to pass time—1,025 total— the cell door opens and Sean and a burly redheaded man that Arthur’s never seen before enter the room with a wheelchair in tow.

Arthur eyes the wheelchair first, then lifts his questioning gaze to Sean, who stands further back near the door, despite being the one who speaks first.

“Uh, you have an appointment,” he says, his voice sounding strained and unsteady.

“With who?” Arthur asks quietly, not because he really cares, but because he needs to know what he’s dealing with here—whether Dr. Arkham is involved in this “treatment” and he should be anticipating the worst.

But before Sean can answer, the other man speaks up. “New doctor. Just transferred here from who the hell knows. Wants to talk to you.”

Arthur frowns, visibly annoyed. So another shrink then. Overpaid liars, they all are.

“Anyway,” the redheaded man continues, pinning Arthur with a wary, hard look, “it’s time to get your ass up.” He inclines his head towards the wheelchair. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Fleck.”

The fact that they’re still concerned that Arthur might somehow hurt them, despite his current immobility in the jacket is utterly hilarious to him.

He stares at them disbelievingly and feels his lips twitching in amusement.

Sudden, shrill laughter squeezes its way out of Arthur’s throat before he can stop it, and the raucous cackling continues even as the two men hoist him underneath both of his arms and bodily lift him into the wheelchair seat.

Arthur’s laughter begins to die down to a hiccupping giggle just as the two men secure a strap with a thick buckle around his shoulders, over the straitjacket, keeping him moored to the wheelchair. Sean, to Arthur’s surprise, is the one who wheels him down the hallway, in the direction of the elevator, and then, when the doors open, to the observation room on the first floor.

Arthur observes the entire trip with an overall disinterest, his eyes skirting over of scenes of patients in varying states of disarray and anguish—a woman strapped to a gurney crying out for her mother; a man walking the hall in agitated circles, rubbing his hands raw. Arthur doesn’t pretend to know the secret to helping these people, but he understands well enough that they shouldn’t be here, wasting away under the thumb of a tyrant, their every move controlled by apathetic, uncaring staff. Their agony upsets him almost as much as his own. No one thinks about what it’s like to be mentally ill in this world, and it infuriates him.

When Sean stops the wheelchair in front of a white door with OBSERVATION ROOM stenciled in thick black letters, Arthur hears quiet movements from behind it, the sound of some papers on a clipboard being shuffled. The new orderly, Big Red, knocks twice with a hammy fist, and a small woman’s voice answers, “Come in.”

And then Arthur is being wheeled into the familiar white tiled room and placed in front of a worn metal desk—across from a blonde woman with large black-rimmed glasses who looks far too young to be a doctor.

Arthur blinks once.

“Hello, Arthur,” the woman greets hesitantly. Her voice wavers only slightly when he says, “I’m Dr. Quinzel.”

Instead of answering, Arthur holds her gaze with visible annoyance. _What the fuck kind of a name is that?_

She fidgets slightly under his cold scrutiny before finally saying, “I’ve been assigned to your case.”

Arthur glances away impatiently, looks upwards at the clock above her head with a dispassionate roll of his eyes. “What do you want?” he asks, without preamble.

His frankness seems to take her aback, her owlish eyes blinking once from behind her glasses. She hesitates slightly before saying, “I was hoping to get to know you.”

“Get to know me?” he repeats slowly, sneering.

“Yes.”

They stare at each other for a few seconds before Arthur says, unkindly, “The way that Dr. Harris got _to know me_?”

Quinzel blinks once, twice, shuffles her papers before finally speaking. “I heard about what happened with your previous psychiatrist. Would you like to discuss it?”

Arthur gives her a long, incredulous stare as though she’s the stupidest person he’s ever met. _Maybe she is_.

“No,” he scoffs, not even trying to hide his obvious disdain for her, for shrinks, for this entire fucking institution.

A stretching, awkward silence settles around them both, and Arthur starts to wonder if every session with her will be this painful.

Then she says, “You were visited by someone twice last week. A Travis Bickle. Who is that, Arthur?”

_Twice?_

Arthur feels like the wind has been knocked from his chest. He blinks at her, barely able to hide the surprise on his face.

Travis attempted to see him again after their first visit? Has he been trying to see Arthur this entire time? How many days has it been? A week? Two? His medicated brain is spinning with panic, and for the first time since his confinement, it dawns on him that he’s genuinely afraid that he may never get to see or hear from Travis again— that maybe Travis mistook his radio silence as some personal slight and found someone else to fawn over, someone who isn’t as emotionally unstable and prone to mood swings as Arthur is.

That exact possibility fills Arthur with regret and rage and a willful jealousy he can barely name.

But Arthur says none of this, of course. Despite his heart threatening to spill out of his chest, he manages to keep his face utterly impassive.

Fixing his expression into one of bored disinterest, Arthur drawls, “He’s no one important. Just some fan. I’ve got lots of those now.”

And it’s an obvious lie, but there is some truth to it. This wouldn’t be the first time Arthur’s been contacted by “admirers'' since he’s been in here—starry-eyed low-lifes in clown masks that think he’s some kind of a hero for ending those three Wall Street schmucks. Each hastily-penned love letter feels more insane than the last, and they all say the same thing: that he’s the hero that Gotham deserves, that they _love_ that he did it to send a message.

Some have even absurdly claimed that he was innocent, that there was no way someone so sweet could commit so many atrocities—that he may have killed Murray, but that they didn’t believe that he'd killed all of the others, despite his confession, because somehow, some way, he was coerced by GPD’s stellar police work.

He’s laughed out loud more than a few times reading some of those; they’re obviously written by some dumbstruck fangirls who haven’t yet realized that the fearful, soft-spoken man they fantasize about died a long time ago.

Yet somehow, with Travis, it felt different. Arthur didn’t see sycophantic bullshit or a façade; just raw, unfiltered honesty in Travis’ honey brown eyes. Travis came to him starving, like a man who had seen far too much in his short time on earth, and he looked at Arthur like he was the center of his universe, not some dangerous new taboo—and that mattered more to Arthur in this destitute prison than any empty flattery ever could. 

Quinzel will never know the extent of his feelings for Travis, and he intends to keep it that way.

Arthur catches her eyes with a cold glare. “He’s no one,” he repeats again, in a tone that's meant as an obvious challenge.

Arthurs’s contentious glare seems to work for now because she quickly glances down at her paperwork, clears her throat. “Alright then. Would you like to tell me about what happened last week?”

Arthur narrows his eyes at her in further suspicion, then says pointedly, “Nothing happened last week.”

She frowns, a small moue of worry creasing her mouth. “The bruise on your cheek would imply otherwise, Arthur. Did someone hurt you?”

“No one hurts me,” he grinds out, glancing away from her to stifle the sudden feeling of indignity welling in his chest. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. Not with her, not with the myriad of doctors hoping to crack open his skull and glean his innermost feelings, not with anyone. 

“But that’s not quite true, is it?” She slides a file out from beneath her mountainous stack of paperwork and starts rifling through its contents. From his seated vantage point, Arthur only glimpses greyed photos, typewritten documents in thick black ink. He feels a muscle working in his jaw.

“What are you talking about?”

“In your file it says that you were subjected to...horrible abuse, trauma that no one should have to endure, let alone a child. I can only imagine how that must have felt. If there are people here mistreating you **—** ”

It’s the sympathetic, almost motherly lilt to her voice that does it; her wide, concerned eyes. Before he knows it, Arthur is jerking against the layered restraints of the straitjacket. “You don’t fucking know me,” he hisses, his eyes practically glowing with rage.

Quinzel startles from behind the desk, her face taking on a distinct flush of fear for the first time since they’ve started their session. But there’s something else there too, something well-hidden that Arthur can’t discern.

Her voice is strained when she says, “Please, Arthur. I only want to help you.”

Arthur stares at her with open contempt and disbelief. This is probably the same cunt who conspired with Dr. Arkham to abolish his visiting hours with Travis—restricting Arthur to the lonely, maddening isolation of his cell for the past week and a half, devoid of all human contact. The same woman who recommended that he be chained up like an animal in order to speak to her. He finds it absurd that she expects him to trust her or even _want_ her fucking help.

“Help me?” he spits, nearly vibrating with anger. “What a _joke_. But I’ve got a better one.” The corners of his mouth stretch unnaturally into his cheeks, a terrifying grin. “You want to hear something really fucking funny, _Doc?_ Something that’ll have you _rolling?”_

Quinzel blanches, her wide-eyed expression unreadable.

“I strangled that fat fuck within an inch of his life because I _wanted_ to, and I’d do it again if I had the chance because it’s what he deserves. It’s what you all fucking deserve. You people come in here and treat me like I’m less than a dying animal on the street, like I’m _nothing,_ and you expect me to what? Trust you?”

The silence between them is paramount. Arthur stews in his straitjacket as Quinzel nervously picks at her manicured hands.

Then, in a sudden flurry of movement, Quinzel is standing up and rounding the desk to Arthur’s side, her white lab coat looking two sizes too big on her thin body. His eyes track her suspiciously as she stands over his left shoulder and starts unbuckling him from the wheelchair’s restraints.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Arthur asks, but there’s no heat in his voice this time, just confusion.

She doesn’t answer him immediately, just keeps unbuckling in silence until the white of his straitjacket is all that’s left, and then she’s standing behind him to unloop the restraints along his spine and slide the jacket from his shoulders too.

Arthur sits there, quiet and uncertain, his pale arms feeling chilly and exposed in the cool room. He rubs them mechanically.

Then, if only to gauge if this is some sort of trick, he tilts his head back to meet Quinzel’s eyes from behind the thick rims of her glasses. The not-so-clinical tangle of emotions that he finds there confuses him even further.

Quinzel swallows once and then says, “You could hurt me now if you wanted to. No one would be able to reach me in time to stop you. But, I think that you’re worth helping, Arthur, even if you don’t believe it yourself.”

Arthur regards her slowly now, with renewed interest, and really starts to pay attention to the details he’d initially missed— the unhealthy pallor to her skin, the sleepless nights etched into her eyes and mouth, the nervous flutter of her breath, and the fact that she looks far too young and kind to be working in a corrupt, hardened institution like Arkham with murderers, psychopaths and their handlers.

Most noticeable, however, is the unguarded empathy that Arthur can practically _see_ oozing out of her in waves, that little nub of neediness just begging for someone to save.

And the fact that she wants to save Arthur— _of all people_ —should be admirable, but instead he finds that it invokes within him a long-abandoned sense of pity, a sign that there’s something deeply wrong with Quinzel if she can’t see that Arthur doesn’t need saving; that Joker isn’t the mask that he wears, that Arthur is.

It would be pathetic if he didn’t find it amusing. _And incredibly useful._

Arthur watches her fidget for a moment longer before he slips on the timid mask of his former self and asks, so quietly that his voice is almost a whisper, “Do you really think that you can help me?”

“Yes,” she nods with conviction. “Everyone can be helped.”

_Wrong._

Arthur looks up at her through the curtain of his damp hair and gives a tired, triumphant smile.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

  
  


The following morning, Arthur is awakened by the telltale jangle of keys, but this time, it isn’t followed by the rusty squeak of the med cart.

Sean and Big Red are standing by his cell door again, minus the wheelchair. 

Arthur sits up drowsily, hair lying sleep-flat against his face, and rubs his eyes just in time for Sean to say, “You got mail.”

Brain still fuzzy with sleep and the remnants of yesterday's anxiety medication, Arthur furrows his brows in concentration and tries to remember the last 24 hours with any sort of clarity.

He remembers the dreaded cold shower, the lye soap, the sinking feeling of growing old and grey in this wretched place. Then he remembers the bizarre session with Quinzel that followed, which began with Arthur berating her as a delusional quack and ended with Quinzel loosening his binds in some pseudo-psychological display of trust.

Afterwards, she’d told him that whenever they met for a session, he wouldn’t need to be restrained so severely anymore, so long as he was—in her words—“committed to getting better.” Then, in another bizarre show of solidarity, she told him that she would try to get his basic hospital privileges reinstated to help aid in his treatment.

Staring at her in confused disbelief, it had taken everything within Arthur to not cackle at her starry-eyed optimism, but he was still playing the role of _Arthur Fleck: Good Little Boy™_ at the time, so he gave her a small, demure nod instead.

She had looked so _pleased_ with herself afterwards that it confirmed Arther’s initial suspicion about the complaisant desperation clinging to her skin, her sickening eagerness to please.

Arthur knows now, with even more certainty, that Quinzel is out of her Goddamn mind.

But he also knows that for some unfathomable reason, she believes that she can help him (or at least _wants_ to believe as much), and Arthur will continue to let her if it means making his time in this hellhole less awful. 

And although he still doesn’t trust her at all, or even believe that she’s capable of manifesting her own ideals, he must admit that—after sleeping without the restriction of a straitjacket for the first time in a week last night—he almost finds himself feeling an inkling of gratitude for her naivete.

Now, he can’t help but wonder if his ability to receive mail is her doing too.

Arthur tries not to be excited by the mail announcement, tries not to make it mean anything.

It wouldn't be the first time Arthur’s gotten random letters from clown groupies (calling themselves “Kinkers” no less), and it definitely won’t be the last. But somehow, the extreme isolation of his confinement—coupled with a complete lack of mental stimulation—leaves him craving every morsel of attention he can get, even if it is dull and superficial.

And suddenly the idea of sifting through inane fan babblings about the color of his eyes doesn’t seem so bad after all. They’ll be entertaining, if nothing else.

Arthur sits up in bed with a renewed sense of energy. 

“Mail, for me?” he says with a dramatic gasp, touching two fingers to his chest in his best impression of a Southern debutante. “How _absolutely_ sweet of you.” He beams at both orderlies in a wide, endearing grin, just to watch Sean’s disgusted frown.

Big Red huffs a short, humorless laugh at Arthur’s flippancy, then says, “Yeah, I guess you’re really Mr. Popular.”

It’s obviously meant as a dig, but Arthur ignores it in favor of batting his lashes once and smoothing his hair back with both hands into some semblance of a style.

“Come on,” Big Red continues as Arthur preens, “let’s get this over with.” He folds his arms across his chest defensively, as though he anticipates conflict.

Arthur stares at the pair of glinting metal handcuffs dangling from Big Red’s belt and knows that they’re meant for himself. He may not be in a straitjacket anymore, but obviously they’re not stupid, despite whatever Quinzel may believe about Arthur’s “recovery”.

“Alright, Alright,” Arthur says, placatingly, with a showy wave of his hands. He stands up and holds his arms out in front of himself in surrender.

He lets Big Red click the cold metal bands around his wrists, and then he’s being led out of his cell by both arms and steered toward the elevator.

When they stop on the first floor, where the library, cafeteria, and other recreational facilities are located, Arthur can’t help but feel a thrill of anticipation. It’s been so long since he’s been on the lower floors—outside the quiet desolation of the maximum security wing—that it’s easy to forget that other people actually inhabit this huge, monstrous building.

In this part of the hospital, even the hallways are squeaky clean—polished to a shoe-shine finish.

That must be why the worn, dilapidated entrance to the library looks so out of place.

Arkham’s hospital library is an old, tiled monolith with huge oak double doors painted over white and the words _Patient Resource Center_ stenciled in black letters on the shatterproof glass panes of each door.

Despite its size, it doesn’t look like it gets much use, and Arthur can’t help but think that Arkham’s decision to turn the majority of its patients’ brains into putty is to blame. 

Sean taps on the door and is buzzed in by the on-duty librarian as Big Red keeps a solid grip on Arthur’s arms. Then they’re walking Arthur into a wide room with dusty wooden bookcases and heavy reading tables situated throughout.

A large check-out counter sits in the center of the room and an old woman in a nurse’s uniform sits behind it, protected by a metal grate with a slot only big enough to slide books through.

Big Red walks Arthur to the main desk just as Sean tells the courier from behind the grate, “Patient: Fleck, 10472.” Arthur watches as the old woman enters a dimly-lit storage room stretching beyond the desk and rolls out a large pushcart with MAIL stenciled on it.

All three men wait patiently as she starts sorting through its contents until she finds a rubber-banded stack of envelopes labeled FLECK.

As she hands the parcels through the slot to Sean, Arthur notices that her name tag says Delores.

With a coquettish grin, he sing-songs, “Thank you, Delores.”

She lets out a happy little noise that lights up her face and says, “Oh you’re quite welcome, dear.”

Arthur beams. She reminds him of Dr. Sally.

Sean eyes Arthur suspiciously, but slides the mail into his cuffed hands regardless.

“You have half an hour,” he emphasizes. “Read, write, whatever. And then you’re going back upstairs. We’ll be watching by the door, so don’t do anything funny.”

“But Sean,” Arthur deadpans, “I’m a clown.”

Big Red actually lets out a bark of laughter at that one, and Sean glares at him. “You _were_ a clown, Freak. Now you’re in here. 30 minutes.”

Then he’s grumbling to himself and walking off with Big Red to stand sentry near the library entrance, leaving Arthur alone with his mail.

Arthur glances around for a moment before deliberately choosing a seat within the vicinity of Delores’ desk. He’s almost sure that the decision won’t be lost on Sean, and Arthur finds the idea of Sean having an aneurysm over sweet ol’ Delores unbelievably satisfying.

With his wrists still constrained by the cuffs, Arthur maneuvers the rubber band from the stack of mail and spreads them like playing cards on the table. He smiles giddily to himself, like a child with presents.

He expects to see some store-bought Valentine’s Day cards or weird construction paper collages not unlike the ones he used to make for the sick kids at Gotham General. 

What he finds instead makes his grin falter. His eyes go comically wide as he reads the postage:

_To: Arthur Fleck_

_From: Travis Bickle_

All at once, Arthur’s heart is a raging staccato in his chest. He glances toward the front of the library on panicked impulse, praying that neither orderly notices how discombobulated he feels.

With shaking hands, Arthur tears open the envelopes and lays the contents on the table side-by-side: 3 letters, about 2 pages each.

Arthur clicks on the rickety green banker’s lamp bolted into the oak table and then starts to read.

_D̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶A̶r̶t̶h̶u̶r̶. Hey. I know you probably weren’t expecting me to do this. I never did anything like this before. I tried to see you, but they told me I couldn’t. So I guess I thought I would give this a shot. You’ve been on my mind everyday and I didn’t know what else to do._

_Shit. I really hope that it’s you reading this. If you don’t get these letters then I’m fucked._

_Anyway, it’s just that you’ve been on my mind a lot. I mean, who am I fucking kidding— you’re all I can think about. I’m no good at this sort of stuff, but I’ve been thinking that if I don’t get the chance to tell you this I might just fucking die. So here it goes I guess._

_I used to think that I knew what I wanted to be before I saw you, and now I realize I have no fucking clue. I want to be whatever you want me to be. You could take me apart if you wanted and I’d let you. I’d let you do anything you want._

_Because the truth is, I don’t really know who I am anymore. Maybe I never did. Maybe Vietnam screwed my head up bad or maybe it’s always been screwed up and it took me too long to notice. Maybe I had to see you shoot Franklin on TV to really understand the type of man I am. The type to push everyone he cares about away and then turn the gun on himself. A coward ready to bite the bullet when the chips are down._

_Sorry, I know I’m being negative again. But sometimes it just gets so dark inside my head. You ever have any bad thoughts? The sort that gives you headaches? I know that I shouldn’t, but I’ve got lots of them, so many fucked up ideas that I don’t know what to do with them. I try talking about it sometimes, but nobody really understands or wants to listen. It probably just sounds crazy. But it makes me feel like the loneliest man in the world._

_I feel so lost sometimes._

_But you make me feel like I’m not, like I finally understand what it is I’m supposed to do. Like I finally understand who I want to be in this shitty world._

_I don’t have to be a ghost. I don’t have to just lay down and die like everybody says._

_I can be yours._

_And neither of us has to face this world alone anymore._

There’s a rip here, at the bottom of the page, as though he scrapped an idea and tore it off. Then the writing resumes:

_Sometimes I think about fucking you, and I can’t help but feel disgusted with myself. I used to think that people like that were degenerates, filthy and unclean. I still feel that way sometimes, that I’m dirty. But when I look at you I think that you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen, and I realize that it’s not wrong. How I feel._

_I know I sound crazy, out of my fucking mind. And I know that you probably don’t feel the same way about me. Why would you? I’m nobody. But I had to tell you because I’ve never felt anything like this before. I can’t stop thinking about you and it’s killing me._

_I had a bad dream the other night, that I was dying. You were holding me like an angel and I died staring at your face. That must mean something, right? It was like a scene from one of those old paintings with a woman holding a drowning man. I know you’re not a woman, but right then, when I was drifting off, all I could think about was how beautiful you looked, how it’s not such a bad way to go._

More rips in the page and then:

_Do you have any family? Anybody you ever cared about? I don’t talk to my family much. Especially not my old man. The last time we talked we got into a real bad fight. He told me I was better off dead. Sometimes I think he was right._

_I was never the sort of man he wanted me to be. I got no wife, no kids. Nothing to be proud of or call my own. Just a taxi driver with screws loose in my head and the make-believe stories I tell myself._

_I know I’m rambling but I never told anyone any of this before. I feel stupid for even telling you right now. Because the truth is, we don’t even really know each other, not really. I don’t know what makes you happy. Or sad. I don’t even know if you want me to be telling you all of this. But I want you to know everything. I got nothing to hide._

There are a bunch of illegible scribbles in the next few lines, and then, finally:

_A few months ago, I did something really bad. I tried to kill some big shot senator. I can’t really remember why. Just something about the whole fucking thing seeming phony to me. Seemed like everyone in this world was a lying piece of shit and I was the only one that could make it right. But in the end I pussied out and didn’t go through with it. Ended up killing a bunch of low-life pimps instead just to feel something. Afterwards I tried offing myself, but I fucked that up too. So I left New York and came here._

_I don’t know what I was looking for in a place full of filth like Gotham._

_A second chance maybe. Something to make the pain stop._

_Then I found you._

_I wasn’t lying when I told you that Joker saved my life. I mean my life never really mattered much anyway, but you made me feel something that I didn’t think was possible for somebody like me. I don’t know what to call it. Hope, maybe? But I’m not sure what I’m hoping for._

_The strikes, the riots, the clowns wearing your face, none of that matters to me. I feel like something, call it God or fate or whatever, wanted me to know you, and when I saw you on TV for the first time I knew that there was something special about you only I could understand._

_You’re not like other people because there’s a pain inside of you that the rest of them can’t see._

_But I can._

_Because I’m not like other people either._

_I hope that these letters find you well. And if they don’t, at least know that I tried. I hope you don’t forget about me. I hope my words actually meant something. I’m not too good at saying the things I feel._

_Your friend,_

_Travis Bickle_

Arthur stares at the assortment of torn loose leaf papers in silence. There’s a tightness pooling in his throat, a searing heat nestled snug in his ribs. Before he can stop it, a breathy hiccup escapes his mouth, high-pitched.

Arthur feels like head is too full all of a sudden, his skin too warm for his bones. He touches a trembling palm to his face, presses his fingers to his mouth. The world sits still around him, just the twinkle of dust motes in the air and the sound of empty space.

Hesitantly, with reverent awe, Arthur traces the broken-winged creature of Travis’ words, feels the places where Travis pressed his pen too hard to paper, maps the minute grooves in the ink. 

He reads the letters again and again, until his eyes are strained by the dim desk light—as if imploring them to commit each line to memory.

Then he picks up the pen connected to a dangling chain on his desk and begins writing, his wrist shaky with nervous anticipation and disuse.

—————————

Later that night, as Arthur lies in bed, the folded, disorganized pages of Travis’ letters hidden in the sole of his shoe, he touches a finger to his lip and pretends that it’s Travis’ hand touching his face. He tries to imagine how it would feel— soft probably, but rougher than Arthur’s own hands. Travis is a cab driver after all.

Arthur runs a hand along his stomach, past the hollow of his ribs, and moves further down, until it’s resting on his bony hip. For the first time in a while, he considers his malnourished body, wonders if Travis would still mean what he said in those letters if he could see the scrawny expanse of Arthur’s flesh.

Arthur likes to think that the Travis that he glimpsed in the letters—the man who spoke to him in hushed, yearning tones—would call him beautiful, smooth gentle fingers along the muscle of his thigh.

Drowsily, Arthur slips a hand into the waistband of his hospital pants. Gazes at moonlight casting shapes on the white ceiling above.

Arthur can’t remember the last time he’s touched himself in here—the early days of his arrest maybe, back when he was full of manic energy and unfettered rage. Nowadays he can’t find the energy or motivation, especially not with the libido-numbing effects of the pills.

But he feels different now, calmer. There’s a sense of bone-deep clarity awakening his senses. 

Arthur closes his eyes and thinks about Travis’ nervous, scrawling confessions, tries to imagine the words in Travis’ low, measured voice— the way his accent would shift the syllables into his warm, rough cadence.

Tries to imagine Travis breathing his name, _Arthur_ , just before he comes. He’s certain that Travis will look beautiful when he breaks, his frenetic energy finally slowed to a smolder.

The hand on Arthur’s dick squeezes, his heartbeat in his palm.

In the letter, Travis told him that he wanted to be his—anything that Arthur wanted him to be. _Does he have any idea what he’s asking?_

He strokes himself long and hard.

There’s a strange power in knowing that Travis has entrusted Arthur with the depths of his longing, these haunting, hungry ideas he’s never uttered aloud. The thought makes his mouth ache.

Unexpected fantasies flit though Arthur’s head before he even has time to process them: Travis begging for release with Arthur’s hand around his throat; Travis fucking Arthur into the mattress until he’s moaning and incoherent; Travis sucking him greedily on his knees.

_Fuck._

In no time at all, Arthur’s breathing is stuttering and he’s biting his bottom lip to stifle the strangled whine that escapes his throat.

In the silence that follows, he tries to ignore the stickiness of his hand, the layer of sweat beading his forehead and clinging to his chest.

He almost feels ashamed of his own hyperactive imagination, the way his mind latches onto Travis’ visage like an oasis in a desert.

But he doesn’t.

He basks in the strange afterglow of his orgasm and doesn’t worry himself about the obsequious nature of right and wrong—just his own elusive want radiating from the tips of his fingers and toes.

As he lay sleepy and satiated, staring at the peeking moon, it occurs to him, with a startling intensity, that he wants Travis more than he’s wanted anything in a very long time. More than Sophie, or the magazine cutouts in his journal, or the faceless women he’s dreamt about on TV.

Unlike the transient ghosts of his illness-induced delusions, Travis is real and attainable—flesh and blood and ready to fall on the blade of Arthur’s love at a moment’s notice.

And yet, he’s also aware that this too is the mottled path to insanity.

Knows that the thought of wanting someone so intensely—of someone wanting him just as much in return—should terrify him. It should remind him of his toxic codependency with Penny, his youth wasted away under the crushing weight of familial obligation and the constant threat of perceived loneliness. It should remind him of ticking time bombs and his slog up those awful, never-ending stairs.

He keeps waiting for the dull ache in his chest to either implode or abate, but it doesn’t. It fills him with a sense of incomprehensible wonder instead, and for the first time in his life, Arthur considers that he may have actually found someone to make that sick, broken thing inside of him feel safe.

With a sigh, Arthur closes his eyes and runs a clean hand through his hair, the cool draft from his cell a balm to his damp skin.

The sound of the city fills his ears from far below, and he can’t help but wonder if there’s a lone taxi out there amidst all the pandemonium.

He sleeps better than he has in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact:
> 
> Kinker—an acrobat or other performer in a circus.
> 
> I thought that it would be fitting for Joker's stans.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Life has been quite busy and it's been a while, but rest assured that I am continuing with this story. Thank you to all of my lovely readers for sticking with it! As always, I love your comments and support. It means a lot to me :D I like to think of this as a New Year's gift! Enjoy!

**Chapter 6**

  
  


It’s midnight in Gotham, a cool drizzle casting the streets in a mirror-like sheen, the reflective red and green glow of traffic lights. Travis sits parked in his taxi, windows drawn, eating a piping hotdog. A couple of people with umbrellas pass him by in a hurry, disappear into clouds of oily, billowing smoke emanating from the sewers.

Like New York, Gotham never seems to sleep, a city of wandering ghosts.

Travis hasn’t been able to sleep either.

It’s been nearly a week since he wrote those damn letters, and it feels like time’s been passing him by in an endless blur. Pick up a fare. Pick up another. Eat, but not for too long. Hop back in the taxi, drive again, look for more fares. Rinse. Repeat. Anything to distract him from the panic of his own racing thoughts.

_What if he never gets my letters? What if he doesn’t even want them? What if I’m a disgusting piece of shit and the world was right to spite me?_

Gotham is a gaping sewer, but Travis knows that he’s barely any better—writing love letters to another man, hoping for something good to come of it.

_Maybe I_ have _finally lost my mind. Maybe I’m a fucking moron._

And suddenly the idea of Arthur reading his hastily scribbled fantasies makes him feel sick inside, ashamed.

He sits across from an adult video store illuminated in pink neon bulbs, stares at its glowing image of a disembodied woman’s leg in heels. The drooping, half-blinking sign above reads ADULT PLAYPEN XXX. Travis’ red rimmed eyes stare into it like an alarm clock.

Someone knocks hard on the window of his taxi and he startles. A drop of mustard lands on his jeans.

“Hey, you working, pal?” A tired-looking man in a business suit pressing a newspaper to the top of his head nods in Travis’ direction. He has to speak loudly to be heard over the rain.

“Huh?” Travis asks, stupidly.

“You working?” the man repeats, louder, grimacing in irritation.

Travis glances at the broken black umbrella in the guy’s hand, spots the glinting chrome watch on his wrist beneath his pressed suit cuffs.

Travis rolls down the window and unlocks the door with what he thinks is a friendly smile, but what probably looks like the baring of teeth given how suffocating his head feels.

“Yeah.”

The man blinks once at Travis’ near-pained expression, but hops in the back of the car nonetheless.

Travis glances at him in the rearview, rubs the crumbs from his hands onto his denim-clad thighs. Tosses the limp hotdog out the window. “Where to?”

The man makes a noncommittal noise and frowns, feebly patting his sopping wet suit with the drenched newspaper in his hand. “I don’t know,” he says distractedly. “Anywhere but here. You know any good places to eat?”

Travis thinks about the crusting yellow stain on his jeans, the crumpled hotdog napkins littering his floor, and the less than reputable vendor he bought it from. “No, not really.”

Mr. Suit lets out a little impatient sigh, then says, “Fine, then just drop me off at Wayne Tower.”

Travis meets his eyes in the rearview, takes in his combed back greying blond hair, now dripping with rainwater, then starts pulling away from the curb. “Alright.”

Travis hasn’t been in Gotham nearly long enough, but he’s heard of Wayne Tower— the huge, stately office building that looms over the city’s financial district. He remembers seeing news footage of Thomas Wayne leaving the building right before he made his infamous “nothing but clowns” comment. 

He figures this guy must be a Wayne employee. Or some shmuck with just enough money to burn to afford a stay at the tacky chain of hotels surrounding the tower. Either way, it piques Travis’ interest.

Driving through the slushing rainwater, the cab is quiet for a few blocks, until Travis asks (really blurts out), “So, uh, you one of those Wayne Enterprise guys?” And then, for good measure, “Did you know Thomas Wayne?”

He smiles just wide enough in the rearview to show his dimples, as if to counteract his abrupt line of questioning.

The man in the backseat glances up warily, as though he forgot that Travis was there, and says pointedly, “You always this talkative?”

Travis shrugs his shoulders noncommittally. Keeps his eyes on the road ahead. “No, not really. It’s just I don’t usually get too many important people in my cab, you know? Not too typical in this line of work.”

That seems to appease the man’s ego well enough because he gives Travis a self-congratulatory little nod in the rearview and says, “Hmm, I bet.” Then he folds his arms across his chest and says, “I trade stock with the company but I never knew Wayne personally. By all accounts though, he was a great man. He would have really turned this shithole of a city around. Horrible, what happened to him.”

“Yeah,” Travis mutters.

And like that, the ride is silent again.

That is, until the man turns over the wet, folded newspaper still clenched in his right hand and squints his eyes to read it, even though the ink is smudged.

He narrows his eyes a bit more before eventually giving up, throwing the paper down onto the seat and spitting, “Isn’t it just disgusting?”

“What?” Travis asks, instantly wary from his shift in tone.

In lieu of an answer, the man flips the newspaper around in his hand and holds it up close enough for Travis to see the tattered article in the rearview without having to turn around.

The words: _KILLER CLOWN STRIKES AGAIN: Terror in Arkham State_ , and then, clear as day, a grinning picture of Arthur’s mugshot alongside a more sobering version where he’s unsmiling and glossy-eyed in hospital white. His hair looks longer and his wide eyes are tired and empty.

Travis briefly catches the words, “attacked a man,” before the paper’s being torn away from his face.

Travis instantly tenses, feels his jaw click into place so suddenly that it hurts. His fingers reflexively tighten on the steering wheel. “What d’you mean?”

Mr. Suit doesn’t seem to notice his reaction to the article because he says, incensed, “You know. The fact that guys like that just get sent to the loony bin instead of going where they belong.”

Travis’ mouth is a grim line as he pulls up to a stoplight. He knows that he should keep his mouth shut—just drive and take this rich prick’s money. Might even earn himself a tip if he laughs at his stupid commments and gets real chummy.

And it’s not like he hasn’t heard much worse from passengers before, things that have horrified him, reminded him of how inhumane this world can be. In the past, Travis has tried his best to be a silent presence, no matter how much he yearned to wipe the scum wearing human flesh from his seats for good.

But right now he feels like punching something— _someone—_ and not saying anything at all doesn’t feel like an option when he’s this worked up.

Travis unclenches his fists on the wheel and tries to hide the contempt in his voice when he says, “I don’t know, I mean shouldn’t people like him be gettin’ help?”

“Help?” The man looks at him in horror from the rearview, like he’s sprouted a third fucking eye. “This piece of shit killed Murray Franklin and he gets to take meds all day and play with blocks? Fuck that. That freak should be fucking executed for what he did.”

Travis breathes out once through his nose, tries to focus on the slippery road ahead and not the searing heat radiating from his chest like barbed wire. The next words leave his mouth before he’s even had time to register them. “Yeah, well I heard he’s sick. And I don’t think we should fuckin’ kill sick people, you know?”

_Shut up shut up shut up shut the fuck—_

“Yeah, he’s sick alright,” the man scoffs, leaning back into his seat to pin Travis with a look of angry disbelief. “One real sick son of bitch. I heard he used to fuck his own mother— real weird shit. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what made him snap.”

Travis barely sees the street in front of him anymore, is only aware of the thudding of his heart in his ears when he grinds out, “You can’t believe everything you read.”

Suits narrows his eyes at Travis— a scornful, suspicious glint. “What would you know? Hey cabbie, no offense, but I’m not interested in your fucking opinion. This city’s a shithole because of people like him, and I don’t need some two-bit taxi driver tryna wisecrack me about it.”

Travis stares ahead, feels the telltale pulse of a headache at his temple.

“These faggots, freaks, looters, degenerates, they all get what’s coming to ‘em. Fleck most of all. I hope he’s real cozy in his cell. I hope he rots.”

Travis stops the car so suddenly that the man jostles in the backseat. “What the hell—”

Travis meets his eyes in the mirror. “Get the fuck out.”

“Hey, you listen here, buddy, I—”

Before he’s even registered the movement, Travis is stepping out of the car, into the rain, and throwing open the back door. The man recoils in indignation and fear as Travis wrestles him out of the backseat by the lapels of his expensive suit jacket and shoves him harshly onto the sidewalk. The man wails when his knees hit the concrete.

Travis hops back into the front seat and speeds off with a wet squeal of tires, leaving the man dripping and swearing at the intersection.

\---------------------------------------------

Travis drives around the city in circles, tearing through the rain for what seems like hours. He loses track of time as he speeds by the same cluster of crumbling brick buildings and epileptic streetlights in a mindless, maddening loop. His head is numb with fatigue, yet pulsates like a dying grenade.

His hands shake where they grip the steering wheel too tight.

He can’t stop mulling over the events of that horrible fucking cab ride in his head. Stars threaten to burst like balloons from his eye sockets.

It was so fucking stupid for him to lose it on that shithead in the taxi, to let a slimy little worm like that get under his skin. All because he talked about Arthur like he was a piece of waste on the street, something filthy and unclean. _Venal_. A diseased, rabid animal waiting to be put down with a bullet.

It shouldn’t bother Travis, but it does—knowing that this is how the fine people of Gotham see Joker: as some disease-ridden freak show deserving a fate worse than death.

Meeting his own eyes in the rearview, he thinks: _That's how they see you too._

Visibly shaken, Travis pulls the taxi into a vacant motel lot, uncaps the flask of whiskey that he keeps in the cigar box with his tips, and takes a long, thorough swig, swiping the back of his hand over his mouth as the warm burn radiates throughout his chest.

The metronomic tick of windshield wipers fills the empty silence of the cab, in tune with his pounding heartbeat— a rainy staccato.

Staring vacantly out of the bleary windshield, Travis shoves a rough hand through his hair and breathes.

Despite the sinking feeling in his gut threatening to make him sick, Travis wants nothing more than to swing the taxi back around, find that son of a bitch, and finish what he started. 

The idea of watching the man squirm, bloody and pained beneath his boot, is immensely satisfying. He thinks about breaking his face over and over again, until that smug look in his eyes vanishes entirely and Travis’ knuckles are bruised and split from breaking his teeth.

But Travis doesn't do it.

Instinctively, he knows that it’s as terrible an idea as any—knows that he just got lucky that it was rainy and dark out, that no one happened to be around when he dragged the man out of the taxi and nearly broke his jaw.

_For Arthur._

Arthur, who might not even give a damn that Travis exists, who might read the startling contents of his letters and cringe in revulsion and disgust.

Arthur, who might laugh mockingly in his face at the idea of Travis’ infatuation. One big fucking joke.

It’s that thought, more than the rest, that makes Travis want to throw up the meager contents of his hotdog.

But he doesn’t do that either. He flips the taxi into reverse and re-enters the rainy street with a splash, watching the traffic lights cast shadows from the corners of his eyes.

\---------------------------------------------

In the wee hours of the morning, Travis pulls up to his decaying old building and parks the taxi beneath the single yellow lamppost out front, listening for the sounds of life that don’t come.

When he turns off the engine and steps out of the cab, he’s stumbling slightly, an aftereffect of the nearly-devoured flask of whiskey he’s tucked away in the back pocket of his jeans.

It’s almost a struggle to make it to the front door and identify his keys, but he manages it well enough. The smell of warm garbage greets him at the door and he jogs up the stairs to escape the stench.

It’s when he’s halfway down the hall to his apartment that he notices a small stack of white envelopes stuffed underneath the door. Travis casts a weary glance behind himself, peeks down the staircase in suspicion.

His first thought is that they’re eviction notices; maybe some people in the building complained about his screaming at night, got tired of being woken up by his panicked yells, and told the landlord.

But when he bends to pick them up, he sees upon closer inspection that the one at the very top of the pile is addressed to _Our darling boy_ , and knows that that isn’t the case.

Sweat breaks out on his forehead as he tears the small tab of tape sealing the letter and reads:

_Dear Travis,_

_I’m writing because your father and I are worried about you. You stopped sending letters a few months back, and no one even knows your phone number. We heard that you’re doing work for the government, which should be good for you. You’ve always been a strong boy. Please know that you’re always welcome back home._

_We miss you._

Travis stares at the note in his hand for a while, squeezing it beneath his fist.

_We._

His mother always did love including his father in her pleas for affection. _We’re_ worried. _We_ love you. _We_ want you to come home.

Travis doubts that with every fiber of his being. 

The sudden anger that overtakes him is halted only by the strange paranoia he feels creeping along his spine. How did the letter make its way here anyway? How would they know where to find him?

It doesn’t make any sense, and his whiskey-addled brain can’t focus well enough to figure it out.

Crushing the entire stack of mail beneath his fingers, Travis shoves them into the pocket of his jeans and unlocks his front door.

He’s barely toed his boots off before he’s dragging himself to his room and collapsing on his bed in an uncoordinated heap, the mattress squeaking from the strain of his weight. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

\---------------------------------------------

Travis wakes up in the near dark with a pounding headache and a sticky, unpleasant taste in his mouth. He crawls out of bed, stripping his clothes as he goes, and makes his way to the bathroom.

His movements feel delayed as he brushes his teeth in the chipped medicine cabinet mirror and showers under a lukewarm spray. The slow click of muscle fatigue.

He thinks about Arthur somewhere in Arkham, enduring a similar hellish monotony, and can’t figure out if he finds that tragic or reassuring.

With his towel bunched around his waist, he sits on the edge of the bed and rifles through his jeans for his whiskey, somehow craving a drink now despite the fogginess in his head.

When his crumpled mail tumbles out of his back pocket in an unceremonious heap on the carpet at his feet, Travis almost ignores it—until he sees ARKHAM STATE HOSPITAL printed on the letterhead, and beneath it, in an undeniably handwritten scrawl:

_To my Travis_

And a shiver runs down his spine.

He scoops up the envelope in an uncoordinated haste and wordlessly tears it open.

The letter is short, less than a page, but it reads:

_My Travis,_

_I had a dream about you the other day, the way your eyes looked when you came to see me. They were wide and beautiful like honey, and they wernt afraid. They wernt afraid of anything._

_But they were so sad. :(_

_And I coudnt help but think that maybe you really see this world. That maybe youre tired of hiding from it to. I know better than anyone what its like to be alone._

_But you dont have to hide anymore. You shoudnt. Because youre better than the whole damn rotten lot of them and they dont deserve you._

_Lately Ive been thinking about who I want to be, all the things I want to do. And I keep thinking about how I want to do them all with you._

_Somtimes I imagine youre here with me, touching my face, my hair. Somtimes I imagine your arms around me instead of the straightjacket keeping me warm._

_Im sorry I coudnt write you back sooner. There are so many things that I want to tell you but I have to go soon. I hope that you see this in time._

_—Joker_ ☺ ♥♥♥

Travis stares at the giant, scribbled smiley face and exaggerated, swooping hearts in awe. The idea of Arthur bent over a desk, intricately drawing each one, makes his breath leave his throat in a rush.

He’s on his feet before he knows it, clutching the note in one hand and the towel around his waist with the other as he makes his way to the scuffed plastic phone on his kitchen counter.

He has the number memorized by now, and it takes no time at all before a tired male voice is answering, “Arkham State Hospital patient intake. James speaking.”

The line is silent for a little too long before he says, “Hey, uh, James. This is Travis.”

Travis hears the moment of weary recognition in the clerk’s voice when he replies with marginally more enthusiasm, “Oh, hey, Travis. How you holdin’ up?”

“I’m doing alright.”

There’s a longish pause before he says, “That’s good, man… That’s real good. You seemed… pretty upset before.”

“I’m fine now,” Travis lies automatically, his hand tapping restlessly against the counter. “So listen, I hate to be calling this early, but is Ar—Fleck accepting visitors?”

James lets out a quiet sigh, then there’s the shuffling sound of papers being moved around in drawers before he says, “Yeah. Just approved for visits yesterday.”

“Thanks,” Travis says quickly, moving the phone away from his ear.

He’s midway to the receiver when James says, “Uh Travis, wait.”

“What?”

There’s a short pause and then, “You sure about this?”

At Travis’ stony silence, he treads a bit more carefully when he speaks next. “I mean, I don’t know you personally, so I probably shouldn’t be saying this. But… be careful with Fleck.”

As if anticipating Travis’ defensive reply, he says, quickly, “I can’t for the life of me figure out why you insist on talking to the guy…but he’s dangerous, you know?”

“Yeah,” Travis says impatiently, dismissively. “I know.” And then he’s shoving the phone onto the receiver with a click so hard he’s sure that James heard it disconnect.

He immediately crosses the room to pull his jeans on, find a shirt. He settles on a blue T-shirt despite the cold, then re-enters the bathroom and splashes what’s left of a near-empty bottle of aftershave on his face.

As he pats his face dry in the mirror, suddenly he can’t help but feel weird about the whole thing, not because of what James said, but because it’s like he’s getting ready for a date with some girl, except that it’s Joker he’s going to see and Travis still hasn’t figured out what to fucking say to him face-to-face when the time comes. Impulsively spilling his guts out in secret letters that no one else was meant to see is one thing, but blurting out any of that stuff to Arthur in the light of day feels insane, like a death wish.

_But he wrote me back_ , Travis reminds himself _. That must mean something, right?_

Despite everything, he still isn't entirely sure. He feels like he’s on a precipice from which there is no return, and the thought terrifies him.

Yet still, he manages to caress his fingers along Arthur’s letter and tuck it into his jacket pocket like it's a precious jewel—something made of glass.

He thinks of Arthur—alone and neglected in Arkham with only his thoughts and memories to keep him company, struggling to stay human in an inhumane world—and the decision is made.

Travis is out of the building and in his cab in five minutes flat—just in time to see the clap of lightning blaze the morning sky.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Perihelion: the point in the orbit of a planet at which it is closest to the sun.


End file.
